When the harbour slips into darkness and the chaos fades away, it isn’t much of a place to hang out. Dead quiet. It’s the kind of silence that gets inside your head. Makes you wonder if you’ve got it wrong, tide, timing, spot. Slabs of freshwater eel the size of your arm hang somewhere below, deep and out of sight. Above them, two game rods sit poised in the rod holders ready to buckle at any moment, the giant reels just begging to tick. While most of Sydney are avoiding the water, lineups empty, boards stashed, Ethan was waiting at the beast’s house and ringing the dinner bell.

Ethan isn’t the kind of guy who sticks to the norm. His year shifts with the seasons. Flyfishing for trout in winter. Hunting for deer in autumn. Paddling bass and cod rivers in the warmer months. It’s safe to say that his weekends stray slightly further afield than a lap of the same three local pubs. In fact he’d admit to feeling more at ease out in the bush than in a pub anyway. For Ethan, there’s always a new environment, a new approach or another skillset to chip away at. The quest of what’s next leaves little time for boredom.

And that next thing was sharks. Not for ego or headlines. Just curiosity taken a little further than most go. By the time the attacks hit the news, the idea had already been forming. Heavy gear had been bought and a plan loosely sketched. But the sudden spike in encounters sharpened everything, made it seem more real. If they were there, and they clearly were, then why not find out for themselves.

But at that point Ethan had never targeted a shark. Ryan Doyle had. Offshore makos, a handful of harbour ...