A French teenage girl is said to have died instantly whilst snorkeling 15 feet off the beach on an Indian Ocean Island after a shark attacked her.
At the time of the girl’s death, her sister watched on helplessly as the incident took place off the shore of Reunion Island, located off the coast of the Indian Ocean’s Madagascar coast.
The girl’s body was later found discovered sliced in two as the shark went on to take a part of her body.
Told Gina Hoarau, the head of public safety on the island: ‘The girls were in an area of St Paul bay where swimming is not allowed. She would have died instantly.
‘The operation to recover the upper part of her body is ongoing.’
Huguette Bello, the mayor of St Paul also went on to tell: ‘The girl, who was 15, came from mainland France and spent her holidays on the island.
‘She was staying on the island with her father, who is in charge of the yacht club in St Paul.
‘Both of the girls had masks and snorkels on, and were swimming just in front of the Bay restaurant.’
Mr Bello said it was the first time ‘in a long time’ that a shark had attacked swimmers so close to the beach.
The UK’s dailymail goes on to tell there have been recent attacks on surfers, but that said, it is highly unusual for sharks to come so close to the water’s edge.
The area around the restaurant is said to have immediately closed to holidaymakers as the hunt started for the killer shark.
In May a French honeymooner was attacked and killed by a shark while he was surfing not far from the beach on Reunion, which is in the Indian Ocean.
The 36-year-old was in the sea off the popular beach of Brisants de Saint-Gilles when a shark charged at him twice, prompting a nearby swimmer to raise the alert when he saw blood on the water
Lifeguards jumped in the water to fetch the victim, who had lost a lot of blood and was in cardiac and respiratory arrest.
They brought him back to the beach but were unable to revive him.
The shark had bitten the surfer on the arm and on the thigh. His wife was on the beach when the attack happened, and was treated for shock.
The latest deadly shark attack means there have been two on the island this year, while three people have been killed by sharks in the past two years.
Sharks are not man-eaters, but sometimes mistake humans for their natural prey, like seals or tortoises, and at other times hurt surfers as they ‘mouth’ them out of curiosity, experts say.
Last year, 78 shark attacks were reported around the world, of which eight were fatal.
Because the illusion of idyllic charm is just that sometimes…
Can sharks see color? is there some poisonous creature of the deeps that we could mimic to help sharks make the “right” kind of mistake when mistaking us for something else?