Oz Hunt For Great White After Diver Killed

The hunt is on for a great white shark after an American diver was killed in the third recent fatal attack off west Australia.

Shark hunters have been baiting waters off Rottnest Island on Sunday following witnesses seeing a 10ft (3m) great white nudge their dive boat after George Thomas Wainwright from Texas was killed on Saturday.

George Wainwright, 32, was underwater when a witness on the dive boat saw "a large amount of bubbles" and then the body came to the surface with fatal injuries, police said.

A great white shark, which was 10ft (3m) long, was later spotted in the area.

The island is 11 miles (18km) from a beach in Perth where a man was believed to have been killed by a great white on October 10.

In the earlier attack, the victim failed to return from a swim at the popular Cottesloe Beach.

Police divers later found the swimming trunks of 64-year-old Bryn Martin on the sea floor, and said the damage to them was consistent with a shark attack.

The deaths follow that of a bodyboarder from a shark attack near Dunsborough, also in Western Australia, last month.

Department of Fisheries manager Tony Cappelluti said: "There has been no sightings, so that would probably indicate that the shark has left the area."

Scientists have warned against an overreaction to the third fatal shark attack off Australia's southwest coast in less than two months.

Australia averages one fatal shark attack a year.

Barbara Weuringer, a University of Western Australia marine zoologist and shark researcher, urged against a shark hunt.

"It sounds a little bit like taking revenge, and we are talking about an endangered species," Weuringer said.

Fisheries Minister Norman Moore said: "This is a unique set of circumstances, and I am desperately... praying this is not the beginning of a new trend ... and we are going to have these on a regular basis."

Western Australia state authorities have been allowed to kill great whites that threaten humans despite the shark's endangered status since 2000, when Perth businessman Ken Crew was killed in front of hundreds of horrified swimmers while wading in knee-deep water off Cottesloe.

Officials believe the attacker was a 13ft (4m) great white.

Sunday was the first time authorities have exercised the legal exemption to hunt a great white.

Great whites can grow to more than 20ft (6m) long and 5,000lb (2,300k). They are protected in Australia, a primary location for the species.