‘Selfishly hell-bent on looking good’: the surfing trend dividing Byron Bay

Amid the perfect blue rolling waves of Byron Bay’s beaches, a menace lurks.

It’s not sharks or stingers that are spoiling the vibes at perhaps Australia’s most famous tourist town, but out-of-control surfboards.

A trend among some surfers to not wear leg ropes attached to their board has been blamed for a spate of serious injuries, including most recently to a surfer who had his arm slashed open by the fin of a rogue surfboard.

Mathew Cassidy was hit by the longboard’s fin while surfing at Wategos Beach, a picturesque cove 2km south of Byron’s main beach. The board – not attached to its owner by a leg rope – flew up among the waves and caught Cassidy under the arm, according to reports.

Ripping through veins and arteries, his biceps was partly torn off by the impact.

“Waves throw surfboards around like matchsticks,” Ian Cohen, former Greens MP and surf enthusiast, says. “A 10-foot board with fins on it coming a long way has got a lot of momentum and weight behind it.”

“They effectively become a deadly weapon.”

Cohen says it is common courtesy for surfers to take the responsibility for wearing a leg rope, and supports local councillors who want that courtesy translated into regulation.

“It is no different from regulations around safe use of boats, water skis or jet skis when there are people around,” Cate Coorey, a Byron Shire councillor, says.

More than 2 million tourists visit Byron Bay annually and Coorey is worried a lack of regulations and enforcement could put visitors on their beaches at risk.

“We really do need something that will actually give people pause for thought before they venture into a crowded surf,” she says. “Those boards travel at great speed, and a lot of them are really pointy.”

Coorey says there