Authorities must act swiftly to recover the body of a missing surfer and issue a destruction order for the great white shark that attacked him, a friend of the man says.
A search for Lance Appleby, 28, of Port Lincoln continued on Friday after witnesses reported seeing him being attacked at Granites Beach, on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, just after 7pm on Thursday.
But family friend and shark fisherman Jeff Schmucker said there was “no point looking for anything out there”.
“Lance’s body’s inside the shark and the shark’s probably not very far away,” he said.
“If they want to do something about it, they should do it now. Fisheries have the power to give a destruction order, but the government doesn’t have the balls.”
Great white sharks are a protected species. The beach remains closed with members of the public advised to avoid the area.
Mr Appleby was in the same area where surfer Tod Gendle, 55, was killed by a great white in October 2023.
Local and water police, STAR Group officers, and local marine rescue and State Emergency Service volunteers were continuing to search the area and drones had been deployed to assist their operations.
Small towns were “turned on their head” by such tragedies and “some closure for the community is probably a good thing”, Mr Schmucker said.
“I’ve already had angry young fellas texting me and calling me today asking me if I’ll do something about it.
“His family and community need closure. All his mates are texting and calling me. It’s pretty sad. That’s their emotions coming out, anger and frustration and stuff.”
Mr Appleby was a carpenter who was “a good, sporty kid from a big family, and had a big heart”, he said.
“He was a good surfer and footballer, and definitely cherished by all his mates,” Mr Schmucker said.
“Lance grew up with my children and they went to school together, we knew him well. My kids just love him. They just had a great time growing up. He was always just part of the gang.”
Mr Schmucker said that he’d heard there was a big shark in the area on Thursday morning and he “tried to warn everybody as best I could”.
“I put it out on my story on Instagram. I said ‘heads up, anyone that’s surfing Granites today, there’s an aggressive, big pointer in there, very close.
“And maybe I should have went to the police station at 10 o’clock in the morning and asked them to put a sign up, kick everybody out of the water, but they wouldn’t have done that.”
The sighting upset one of his friends, who went out on his jet ski to warn surfers at the beach.
“And I said, ‘well, I’m not going out there to tell everybody, because they’ll just laugh at you’,” Mr Schmucker said.
His friend spent three hours warning surfers and helped ferry some of them back to shore.
“When he got home, his phone rang and the shark attack had happened, and the board was still floating there, so heroically, went straight back out there, put his ski in the water, went out and retrieved the board, and then he gave the board to the police.”
People were questioning whether it was the same shark that took Mr Gendle, Mr Schmucker said.
“Well, we’ll find out shortly, because they’ll take a DNA test off this board,” he said.
“And they took a DNA test off of Tod’s board, and they can see if it’s the same shark.”
