St Clair Shark Bell – Buy or view the Ōtepoti | Dunedin gallery

Sometimes it’s a good thing if an item goes unused. St Clair has a shark bell and I would be very happy if I went my entire life and never heard it rung! This is a big change from the mid 1960’s where in the space of seven years, there were five great white attacks, three fatal, off the Dunedin coast.The attacks resulted in the deaths of Les Jordan at St Clair in 1964, Bill Black at St Kilda in 1967 and Graham Hitt at Aramoana in 1968. These attacks gave the city the unenviable record of having the worst shark attack fatality record in the country. I would imagine that for some residents of Dunedin, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 hit movie Jaws would have been incredibly hard to watch given the devastation, trauma, and hysteria that surrounded the attacks. Which brings me back to St Clair’s shark bell. I shall be very happy if I never hear it rung!