Australian surfers stay out of the sea as great whites torment town

Residents of Ballina in New South Wales are baffled by a sudden spike in shark attacks along the coast - and searching for hi-tech, ecofriendly ways to stop them

Darren Rogers's living room is full of surfboards, but it is all he can do to get back in the water. The first time he tried, he looked down at his submerged legs and had a flashback of fellow surfer Tadashi Nakahara's horrific injuries.

Rogers is haunted by his final moments with the man he tried to keep alive after a catastrophic encounter with a great white shark. It severed both of Nakahara's legs, the kind of injury that Rogers knew could only be inflicted by the ocean's apex predator, "as big as your car, weighing almost as much " I do have vivid images of his injuries but because I was so close to his face, his eyes are the things that get me " just wishing I could make him alive again", he says.