My condolences to the family and friends. It's a shocking loss of life of someone so young.
I don't think culling sharks is the answer as has been said the ocean is their territory and we all know the risks when we go in.
The question I think that needs to be asked is are we overfishing? Are we slowly destroying and taking away their natural food sources and the sharks are coming closer and hungry looking for food. If so then this is what needs to be addressed
What about shark nets? swimmers have a safe zone to swim in, no sharks have to be killed.
Surfed Wedge regularly for the last 10 years. Heard some stories - but I've never personally seen or had a problem.
Surfed that particular spot 4 times in the last 2 months and although the thought is always in the back of your mind, just being out there surfing has always made any fear very secondary. Sounded like a terrific bloke - RIP Ben .
Innocence lost for Wedge now thanks to you 'Brutus'.
Now, find it and kill it - it'll be back no ifs or buts.
Love and Peace to all
the shark should be destroyed! if a dog did that would it still be wondering the streets?
Man powerheads are dangerous.
If you're talking about the style that slide onto the tip of a spear, which you then fire... then they're the same sort that if your spear hits a bit of reef and the powerhead explodes, then it propels the spear backwards at great velocity straight back through you.
Ouch.
I take my chances with the sharks thank you very much.
Don't they roam the Indian Ocean from South Africa to Aus and back again?
They don't hang about, they cruise.
Heaven help us if this bad individual teaches his mates. He (or she) is rogue.
Ban cage diving with great whites.
well we over fish the sharks food supplys with these things
www.communityrun.org/petitions/stop-giant-fishing-trawler-in-tasmania
cant expect them to do much else or get one of these
For self defense of course www.waspknife.com/
power heads are only good if you can see it coming. I would hazard a guess most great white attacks are by stealth
sign the petition people, i'm off to get a new knife! 
i think its time for action to prevent any more deaths due to shark attacks.
sure they are a protected creature but so are crocs and lions.
what happens to them when they kill someone..... you take care of it.
sure there are fines involved if you kill a great white shark but there are people out there who are prepared to pay those fines for a safer existence of the watersport community
I dont believe it would make the situation worse.
We are protecting one main species while we go to town on the rest, we have decided along time ago that we know best and look at the result .
We dont need to cull we just need to be able to fish them again to reduce numbers
I don't think it's overfishing. GWS don't really chase down and eat fish from what I understand. They are too big to waste energy on a small fish to do that. They like large fatty animals (high energy) like seals and Whales.
In the other thread on sharks someone said there was a correlation between the resurgance in whales along the coast and GWS. Makes much more sense to me.
If this is true then it is ironically not due to overfishing but the opposite.
I think you could help yourself by not being out on the water near dawn or dusk. Shark shields are not foolproof but definatley do work to an extent. And they are fairly cheap.
The Great Whites are not dumb. It's taken them a few decades but they've finally figured out there are easy snacks in the surf.
