Israeli police scoured the Mediterranean coast for a swimmer they fear may have been attacked by a shark, in an area that has long seen close encounters between marine predators and beachgoers who sometimes seek them out.
A shiver of endangered dusky and sandbar sharks has been swimming close to the area for years, attracting onlookers who approach the sharks and drawing pleas from conservation groups for authorities to separate people from the wild animal.
Nature groups say those warnings went unheeded. Police and rescue workers launched a search along the coast after reports that a shark attacked a swimmer on a beach near the city of Hadera. Israel’s Fire and Rescue Authority announced Tuesday afternoon that it had found remains of a body, which was brought to the forensic institute for identification.
The beach was closed off on Tuesday as search teams used boats and underwater equipment to look for the man. The man’s identity was not immediately known, but Israeli media said he had gone to swim with the sharks.
Israelis flocked in large numbers to the beach during a weeklong holiday, sharing the waters with a dozen or more sharks. Some tugged on the sharks’ fins, while others threw them fish to eat.
Dusky sharks can grow to four metres long and weigh about 350 kilograms. Sandbar sharks are smaller, growing to about 2.5 metres and 100 kilograms.
Yigael Ben-Ari, head of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority’s marine ranger force, said it was not known how the man behaved around the sharks. But he said the public should know not to enter the water when sharks are present and not to touch or play with them.
Witnesses report seeing sharks in area
One video shared by Israeli media showed a shark swimming right up to bathers in thigh-deep water.
“What a huge shark!” the man filming exclaims, as the shark approaches him. “Whoa! He’s coming toward us!”
“Don’t move!” he implores a boy standing nearby, who replies, “I’m leaving.”
The man then asks, “What, are you afraid of the sharks?”
The behaviour, some of which was witnessed by an Associated Press photographer two days before the attack, flew in the face of the advice of the parks authority.
“Like every wild animal, the sharks’ behaviour may be unpredictable,” the authority said in a statement.
This would be just the third recorded shark attack in Israel, according to Ben-Ari. One person was killed in an attack in the 1940s.
The area, where warm water released by a nearby power plant flows into the sea, has for years attracted dozens of sharks between the months of October and May. Ben-Ari said swimming is prohibited in the area, but swimmers enter the water anyway.
Quirks and Quarks7:03Shining a bright light on a new way to discourage shark attacks
Sharks attacks on humans are often a result of mistaken identity, when they mistake a swimming human or a surfboard for a seal or sea lion. Researchers have found that a bright patterns of LED lights can break up the visual pattern of a swimmer so that they look less like a shark’s usual prey. Dr. Lucille Chapuis was part of the team that tested various patterns of lights in Seal Island, South Africa. Their research was published in Current Biology.
“It would have been appropriate to take steps to preserve and regulate public safety, but over the years chaos has developed in the area,” the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, an environmental group, said in a statement.
It said fishermen, boats, divers, surfers and snorkellers intersected dangerously with a wild animal that “is not accustomed to being around crowds of people.”
The group said further steps were needed to prevent similar incidents, such as designating a safe zone from where people could view the sharks without swimming close to them.
Israeli authorities on Monday closed the beach and others nearby, and they remained closed on Tuesday.
