Shark-mauling victim off Israel’s Mediterranean coast was likely spearfishing

By

The partial remains of a man mauled to death by sharks off the coast of Hadera, on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, have been found, according to local reports.

The man, a father of four believed to be in his forties, was killed on Monday, 21 April, in the waters off Olga Beach, located on Israel’s northwestern Mediterranean coast, approximately 45km north of Tel Aviv.

The incident was witnessed by a number of onlookers, and footage of the man flailing at the surface during the mauling has been widely circulated in the global media.

According to the Global Shark Attack File (GSAF), the incident is just the fifth to have taken place in Israeli waters – either Mediterranean or Red Sea coasts – since 1962, and the first ever recorded to have resulted in a fatality.

The deceased man has been variously described as a diver or swimmer, however, reports in the Israeli media have suggested he was spearfishing near the outflow from Hadera power station at the time.

The power station is cooled by pumping seawater through its systems, and the outflow is subsequently much warmer than the surrounding water.

The warmer water, especially during the cooler months between October and May, attracts sharks – mostly dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus) and sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus) – in numbers.

Swimming is prohibited near the power station, but, according to Yigael Ben-Ari, head of the Israeli Parks and Nature Authority’s marine ranger force, the prohibition is largely ignored.

According to Israel National News, the victim was from Petah Tikva, approximately 10km east of Tel Aviv, and had stopped to go fishing in the mouth of the Hadera River on his way home from his place of work, located to the north of Olga Beach.

Israel’s national public service broadcaster, Kan – as reported by the Times of Israel – said the man was ‘swimming in the area with the fish that he had caught attached to his belt’, which may well have attracted the interest of the sharks.

Prior to the fatal incident, videos circulating on the internet show beach-goers petting and teasing the sharks as they swam into the shallow water.

A spokesperson for Sharks in Israel said they had received reports of people pulling on the sharks’ tails, beating them with paddles, throwing fish at them and surrounding them in the water.

Experts interviewed by Kan suggested that the mauling was ‘just a matter of time’ as a result of the ‘unreasonable behaviour’.

The sharks involved in the mauling – potentially up to three individuals – are thought to be dusky sharks, a globally distributed temperate-water species which can grow to up to 4m in length, approximately twice the size of the smaller sandbar sharks that also frequent the waters around Hadera.

Due to their size, dusky sharks are considered potentially dangerous to humans, although there have been just 15 incidents involving the species recorded in the GSAF since 1954, mostly in South Africa and the Caribbean, and none of them fatal.

There are only five incidents logged in the GSAF confirmed as involving sandbar sharks, all of which appear to have resulted in only minor injuries.