Erica Fox missing Santa Cruz, California triathlete remains found after victim of shark attack while training with swim team, Kelp Krawlers. She knew the risks, but was fearless according to her husband, Jean-Francis Vanreusel.
Perhaps as an endurance athlete drawn to the adrenaline and allure of high octane sporting achievements, even the threat of a shark attack was par for the course…
The body of a missing triathlete swimming off the shores of Santa Cruz, California last week has been recovered, with authorities saying her mangled remains were the consequence of a shark attack.
Erica Fox’s corpse was found Saturday afternoon still clad in her black wetsuit south of Davenport Beach in Santa Cruz — about 25 miles from where she was last seen, while training with her swim team.
Triathlete was leading pack when she was suddenly attacked by shark
Fox, 55, went missing on December 21 at around 11:30am while swimming alongside fellow members of the recreational swim club Kelp Krawlers, which she co-founded 20 years ago according to her husband.
Jean-Francis Vanreusel was swimming about 100 yards behind his wife with 13 other members of a local swimming club on Dec. 21 when a shark dragged his wife of 30 years into the water, he told Mercury News.
‘It started to click that everybody was back on shore but Erica,’ team member, Sharon Carey, who stayed close to the shore during her swim, told The Mercury News.
‘I just felt numb. I was hoping that maybe she got out of the water and then decided to walk back.’
Witnesses reported seeing a shark with a human body in its jaws before it submerged, a Coast Guard official told the outlet.
‘She didn’t want to live in fear,’ Vanreusel told Mercury News. ‘She lived her life fully.’
Endurance athlete was wearing electromagnetic device meant to ward off sharks
First responders rushed to the scene, but were unsuccessful in their search.
Vanreusel said Fox was found still wearing a ‘shark band’ on her ankle. The electromagnetic device is meant to ward off sharks like the one that killed her.
Fox has competed in two half-Ironman competitions and participated in an annual triathlon called Escape from Alcatraz for almost 20 years, according to NBC News.
The athlete’s death is the second fatal shark attack at Lovers Point in 73 years, and the first since a 17-year-old boy was killed in December 1952, according to Mercury News.
Spate of latest (but irregular) shark attack in the bay
It’s also the second attack on a Kelp Krawler member, which Fox co-founded, in just three and a half years after Steve Bruemmer was bitten on the leg — and only survived after he was rescued by nearby paddleboarders.
‘Will people get back in the ocean? Will they get back in the ocean, but not here?’ wondered Sharen Carey, who has been swimming with the Kelp Krawlers for more than a decade.
‘I don’t think anyone knows at the moment, because I think we’re all just still in shock, disbelief and grief, not knowing what we need to do next, except to love and support each other.’
