A swimmer has been killed by a great white shark off the coast of Sydney, Australia. According to eyewitnesses, it was a shark with a height of about 4.5 meters.
“This person was fatally injured as a result of the attack. There was nothing the emergency services could do,” a representative of the New South Wales Ambulance Service told Reuters news agency. Human remains were found in the water. The identity of the swimmer is unknown.
This is the first fatal shark attack off Sydney since 1963.
I heard a cry
Witness Chris Lento told a local news station that the shark attacked the swimmer “vertical” from below. Linto: “We heard a scream and immediately turned. It was like a car hit the water.”
A fisherman watched the attack from a rock and said that the scene went on for a long time as the shark did not stop attacking. “It was terrible.” After the attack, the police closed the beach and searched for the shark.
Small chance of attack
According to a museum in Florida that annually tracks all shark attacks around the world, Australia had the highest number of shark attack victims with three deaths last year. Eleven people were killed in shark attacks last year.
With these numbers, the museum asserts that the chance of someone being attacked by a shark is very small and that the number of deaths from shark attacks has structurally declined in recent decades.
It seems that sharks usually make mistakes when attacking humans. For example, they mistake surfers, who are often active in areas where sharks also swim, for sea lions.
