Shark attack victim died quickly, say police - The Australian

"She just wanted to know very quickly if Kyle had suffered . . . in terms of the injuries to the young fella," Sergeant Craig Anderson said yesterday.

The officer from Dunsborough, on the southwest coast of Western Australia, said "she took some peace from the fact we could say (because of) the nature of his injuries he obviously didn't suffer for too long".

Mr Burden's friends yesterday laid flowers and gazed out to sea as they paid tribute to the "happy and easy-going" 21-year-old who was taken at Boneyards surf break near Margaret River on Sunday.

He was bitten on the lower half of the body while bodyboarding with a friend and several other surfers. His friend and another surfer brought him to the beach after the attack but the young man was already dead.

Helicopters and powerboats patrolled the coast yesterday looking for the maneater, as debate raged about whether to kill the shark.

The type of shark responsible for the attack is not yet known. Some people who were canoeing nearby though they saw a bronze whaler, but other locals and shark experts think it was most likely a white pointer.

Some surfers said a white pointer was known to surface regularly in the area.

"The gossip is that it's an old female pointer looking for easy prey," one local, Gary, told ABC radio.

Felipe Guiss, who worked with Mr Burden as a kitchen hand at a local brewery last summer, said Mr Burden had only started surfing a few years ago and loved life in the southwest of WA, where he had moved from Sydney.

"He loved Margaret River, and the simple things in life," Mr Guiss said. "He liked it much better than Sydney. He was always happy and easy-going."

Ed, another friend of Mr Burden, who did not want to give his surname, said Mr Burden would have supported calls by Busselton Shire president Ian Stubbs and others for the shark to be hunted down and killed.

"I can actually recall him saying these bigger sharks are a threat to our community and he would back (them being killed)," Ed said.

Great whites are a protected species and it is illegal to kill them. Police and the Fisheries Department said they would chase the shark out to sea if they found it.

The department's shark specialist, Rory McCauley, played down suggestions an ageing female shark lived in the area and may have been responsible. "There's no evidence there's actually residential white sharks in any part of the Australian range," Mr McCauley said. "It's more likely the shark, if it was a white shark, was transient."

Sergeant Anderson again praised Mr Burden's friend -- whose name has not been released -- for helping him out of the water.

"He was obviously visibly shaken and in shock with what had happened," he said.

"To come for a surf with your mate in the same car together and have to leave with somebody else in tragic circumstances is pretty hard to take." At the beach near Cape Naturaliste, close to where the attack occurred, Mr Burden's friends planted a surfboard in the sand on which they pasted messages and photos of him, while two surfers defied a beach closure and rode the peeling waves alone.

"We'll miss you, brother. Show (deceased former world surfing champion) Andy Irons how it's done," wrote one friend.

Mr Burden's mother last night arrived in the nearby town of Dunsborough 255km south of Perth, after flying in from the Gold Coast.

She was expected to visit the beach today.

05 Sep, 2011

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