Australian Teen Surfer Killed by Two Sharks
Date: 17-Dec-04
Country: AUSTRALIA
Witnesses reported seeing the two sharks -- one up to five metres (16 feet) long -- attack the teenager while he was being towed behind a boat on his surfboard.
"It got his left arm and took him around the boat and then another shark has come in and they just took him to pieces," an unidentified woman told Nine Network television.
Police and emergency officials said they had been unable to find any sign of the surfer or the sharks since the mid-afternoon attack off West Beach in the South Australian state capital of Adelaide.
They said the attack happened after the surfer, described as an 18-year-old, fell from his surfboard which was being towed by three friends in a small boat about 300 metres (980 feet) from shore.
"He fell off the surfboard and the shark appeared and took him," rescue worker Fraser Bell told reporters.
"Apparently it tore him in half and the other shark came in and took the rest," he said.
A 38-year-old died after he was mauled by a shark while spearfishing off the far northeast coast of tropical Queensland state on Saturday. The species of the shark which attacked him was not known, police said at the time.
In July, another surfer died in Western Australia state when he was attacked by a shark described as being "as big as a car".
Australia has a reputation for shark attacks but there are relatively few each year. International Shark File figures show most attacks occur in North American waters.
The first documented attack in Australian waters was in 1791 and there have been more than 625 attacks in the past 200 years, about 190 of them fatal.
Great white sharks are highly migratory and travel thousands of kilometres in search of food. Despite being one of the fiercest of predators, they are also extremely vulnerable and are a protected species in Australian waters.
