Pictures show shark bites after woman knocked off kayak at Cheynes Beach, close to Jay Muscat fatal attack

A massive shark that knocked a woman off her surf ski at Cheynes Beach near Albany on Thursday, lurked in shallow waters close to shore for some time after the incident according to a witness. Just before 8am a woman was knocked into the water about 100m offshore after a shark, believed to be five to six metres long, bit her kayak. Rhonda Westerberg said she heard the woman call out and saw that someone had come off because their kayak was sideways. “Then we saw the other two kayaks who were probably 50m away in different directions heading toward the kayak that had capsized,” she said. The woman was a tourist from NSW who had been staying at the Cheynes Beach Caravan Park. Pictures of the surf ski taken after the incident show horrific puncture marks on the underside of the kayak. The pictures reveal the size of the marine predator’s jaws and the deep puncture marks pockmark the vessel. Witnesses reported that the woman appeared uninjured before leaving the park, but that she had “certainly had a bit of a scare”. Ms Westerberg’s husband is a fisherman and they had been fishing with the nets out for herring in the same water the day before. She said she watched the shark swim around in the clear water for 40 minutes following the attack. “It was very long, I saw it would be well over 3m at least, 4 maybe, it’s hard to tell when they are out there,” she said. “We’ve seen lots of sharks here so that would be one of the bigger ones. “It was just after 10am and it stayed around for probably half an hour or so, we were watching it through the binoculars, it just kept going up and back in the white bottom.” Jay Muscat was just 17 when he was killed by a great white shark near the same beach. The teen’s death shocked the community, after he was attacked while spearfishing at Three Stripes on 30 December 2014. A shark alert was issued by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development just after 11am and the City of Albany rangers have closed the beach for 24 hours, at which point the situation will be reassessed.