Australians debate hunting nasty shark

Dec 19, 2006, 9:24 GMT

Sydney - Australians debated Tuesday whether a shark that bit a surfer on a popular beach near Melbourne should be hunted down and killed.

Peter Galvin, 25, was in hospital recovering from serious leg wounds inflicted by a shark Monday. Victorian state government leader Steve Bracks rejected calls for vengeance.

'The reality is that that shark could be anywhere,' Bracks said. 'There could be new sharks in the area.'

It was the second serious shark attack in Australia this month. A 15-year-old boy had his right leg bitten off when he was surfing near Esperance in Western Australia.

Andrew Fox - whose father, Rodney, is a world-famous authority on sharks and the curator of Adelaide's Rodney Fox Shark Museum - has appealed to state governments not to get caught up in shark phobia and be panicked into accepting the notion of a 'rogue' shark.

'They don't tend to become 'rogue' sharks because there has never been a case where a shark has taken a liking to eating people,' Andrew Fox said. 'They normally don't bite humans. They bite them but don't consume them. We don't have the energy content of dolphins, whales and snappers. But they kill people with the test bite.'

Rodney Fox got himself into the Guinness Book of World Records by surviving a mauling by a great white that took 462 stitches to repair.