KEY POINTS:
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...
Clinton Duffy, one of the country's leading shark experts, is warning beachgoers to beware after two boaties had close encounters with 300kg great whites.
The warning follows the dramatic rescue last Saturday of Zak Golebiowski, from Mt Gambier in Western Australia, by quick-thinking Kiwis Amy Worling and Pete Hickmott, who dragged the 15-year-old from the water and used a sweatshirt and extension cord as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding.
The Otago couple, on a working holiday in Australia, have been credited with saving the teenager's life after a 5m great white shark ripped his leg off.
Although shark attacks in New Zealand were rare, and deaths even rarer, Duffy said more sharks were seen at this time of year as they moved inshore to breed and feed.
Last weekend, for example, the Department of Conservation received reports of a 300kg great white coming within metres of a boat in the Bay of Islands and another off the Tutukaka coast.
The Tutukaka great white ate a fisher's berley pot before disappearing from view while the other shark devoured a snapper that had been hooked before making a getaway.
Duffy said if people wanted to avoid sharks they should stay away from areas where people were fishing, or anywhere that offal may have been discharged.
Only 13 people have been killed by sharks in New Zealand since record-keeping began 163 years ago. The last death was in Te Kaha in the Bay of Plenty in 1976, when a spearfisher was killed by what is believed to be a bronze whaler.
However, unprovoked shark attacks are more common, with an average of two a year since 1990. The International Shark Attack File has documented 108 shark attacks in New Zealand since 1837.
Despite those figures, Duffy said there were almost certainly fewer sharks around than previously, largely because of commercial fishing and the impacts of coastal development on nursery habitats. Increased demand for shark fins from China since the mid-1990s compounded these.
