Teenage girl dies after her leg bitten off by shark in Australia
A seventeen-year-old girl died after being attacked by a shark while surfing alongside her father during a beachside family holiday in Australia.
The girl was bitten on the leg near Esperance, a town in south-west Australia, while her mother and two younger sisters watched from the beach.
She was rushed to hospital but suffered severe blood loss and died.
The attack occurred just before 4pm on Monday in the state of Western Australia, which has had a spate of shark attacks in recent years. In 2014, Sean Pollard, an Australian, was attacked by a shark while surfing at the same spot and lost his left arm and both hands.
The girl was from Western Australia but has not been identified. She was surfing at a popular spot near Wylie Bay Beach, east of Esperance.
The beach has been closed until further notice. Authorise warned surfers to avoid the area for 48 hours. Mr Pollard, now aged 25, suffered serious injuries during his attack and only survived after using his board to fend off the shark as it tried to maul him for a second time.
“It just moved so quick,” he told Channel Nine in 2015.
“Its eye was the blackest black I’d ever seen, and that’s just a vision that’s burnt into my mind… It started shaking its head. Both my arms were in its mouth and it just took me underwater.
It had ripped my forearm off and, like, sucked the meat off my bone, like a chicken bone pretty much.” Ten people are believed to have been killed by sharks off the coast of Western Australia since 2010.
The coast around Esperance is believed to be a popular site for deadly great white sharks because the area has seal colonies and is rich in marine life. Western Australia conducted a controversial shark cull in 2014 which resulted in the killing of about 70 sharks.
Critics said such culls do little to minimise the threat and called for improved education about safety precautions for surfers and swimmers.
An increase in attacks on Australia’s east and west coasts in recent years has been attributed to rising numbers of beachgoers and possibly changes in the movements of some shark populations.
