(this is not a news piece, it´s more a personal introspective blog entry which contains my opinions)

Yesterday morning while on Facebook I picked up on a shark attack that happened in Plett. Details were sketchy, and I tried to get all the facts together to write a story for Wavescape which normally reports on shark related news. As we were making some further updates to repost the article and double checked the facts, we got word that Tim had just died due to major blood loss. This came as a big shock, because it was initially thought that he was at least stable and getting medical attention and that he would make it.

Covering a shark attack in writing is one thing, but it´s a whole different story when the victim dies. As wannebe surf journo, there is a thrill in being the first to tweet your article and reporting on a newsworthy event as it goes down. At that point, I was still relieved that he made it and told myself that even though he probably lost his leg, he is at least alive.

For me, the whole chase lost the thrill when I heard Tim did not make it. That shocked me to the core. I realized that it´s not a game. It´s somebody´s life that we are writing about. Very often these journalistic endeavours are driven by selfish motives of either getting recognition or getting the most page-views, making advertisers happy and beating the competition to it.

People on the Internet knew before Tim´s relatives what had happened. There were attempts to keep him anonymous until relatives were contacted, but due to social networking and journos chasing after the story, Tim van Heerden was instantly famous before he took his last breath.

Many times throughout the day, I read the stories as they popped up all over the Internet, and saw how the facts changed from story to story. Even mainstream media had their facts wrong, because they copied from the earlier posts I made. (Spike and I corrected wavescape.co.za as soon as facts were followed up). Pierre Marqua, Wavescape photo editor, remarked that we (the surf media industry) are really like a bunch of vultures. I have to agree, sometimes we are.

No doubt there will be a lot of soul searching going down in this time. I did not know Tim van Heerden, but my heart goes out to his family and friends. I can´t help but wonder how Tim fealt during this whole experience of being attacked by a shark and what was he thinking while the medics were fighting a loosing battle to save him.

The fellow surfers, medical personnel, and the NSRI acted very fast and showed great courage under the circumstances. It must be very tough when you try to save somebody and it comes to the point where you cannot do anything further.

My five year old, observing my inner trauma from the sidelines, asked me some hard questions about death as we stopped at Supertubes that afternoon. I responded to the best of my ability and told him that none of us can escape life alive. We all have to die at some point, we just don´t know when.

As life is, tomorrow, for most people, Tim will just be part of a statistic of fatal shark attacks. To those who knew him and perhaps to fellow surfers and ocean users it´s "one of our brothers" that fell while he was doing something that he loved.

Once again, my condolences and respect to Tim van Heerden´s friends and family.

Tim, may you rest in peace. Brother.