A shark killed one person and seriously injured another on Thursday at a beach in Australia’s eastern state of New South Wales, rescuers and police said.
State police said the two were bitten by the shark early in the morning and that one victim, a woman, died at the scene.
Ambulance services told AFP a man suffered serious leg injuries and has been airlifted to a hospital in a stable condition.
Steven Pearce, Surf Life Saving NSW chief executive, described it as “a really, really terrible incident”.
“This area is so remote, there’s no life guarding services up there at all,” Pearce told local radio 2G.
Emergency services were called around 6:30 am (1930 GMT Wednesday) to the attack, which took place near a beach in Crowdy Bay, around 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of Sydney.
There have been more than 1,280 shark incidents around Australia since 1791, of which over 250 resulted in death, according to a database of the predators’ encounters with humans.
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In September, a great white mauled a surfer to death at a popular Sydney beach.
The man, who left a wife and young daughter, lost “a number of limbs,” and his surfboard was broken in two, police said.
Australia’s oceans are teeming with sharks, with great whites topping the list of species that might fatally chomp a human.
Undeterred, Australians flock to the sea in huge numbers — with a 2024 survey showing nearly two-thirds of the population made a total of 650 million coastal visits in a single year.
How best to protect people from sharks is a sensitive topic in Australia.
Authorities have adopted a multi-layered approach — deploying drones, fixing acoustic trackers to sharks so they can be detected by listening buoys near popular beaches, alerting people in real time with a mobile app, and stringing up old-fashioned nets.
Researchers say shark lives, too, need protecting.
Globally, about 37 percent of oceanic shark and ray species are now listed as either endangered or critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a database for threatened species.
AFP
