Laura Geyer, 10, found it at Blueys Beach, and she thinks so.

“I was on the beach, and I found a yellow piece of rubber and started playing with it,” she said. “When it was time to go, my uncle put it in my beach bag and brought it home.”

Not much more was thought about the shiny souvenir, until a newspaper flipped open.

“Someone had the Advocate there, and noticed the story,” Laura’s dad Steve said.

“The story” was last week’s tale of Bayden Schumann, also 10, who lost part of his flipper in the Seal Rocks surf. He felt nothing at the time, but was chilled an hour later to see a bronze whaler shark lurking at the beach next door.

“It was definitely a piece of the flipper,” Steve said.

“You could see when you held it up to the picture [of Bayden’s torn flipper].”

Laura, who lives at Toronto, was not put off by her find.

“We go up to Blueys Beach for holidays all the time, and I think I’m going back on Friday.”

According to the online Shark Database, bronze whalers grow up to 4m long, and can weigh over 300kg. They favour hunting schooling fish like salmon and whiting; it routinely brings them into the path of surfers and swimmers, who they’ve been know to attack.

If Laura’s find really is Bayden’s flipper, it would probably not have resurfaced if taken by a tiger shark. The ‘garbage cans of the sea’ have been found with seabirds, turtles, octopi, lobsters, other sharks, cats, dogs and number plates in their digestive systems.