Shark kills man in S.Africa

A man was killed by a shark while body boarding at a bay in Cape Town on Thursday in South Africa’s second deadly mauling this year.

“According to eye witnesses, they saw a man being bitten by a shark,” said National Sea Rescue Institute spokesman Craig Lambinon, adding that emergency services and the NSRI had arrived on scene.

“They can confirm we have found a body of a man on rocks in a barely accessible area,” he told AFP.

“Efforts are underway at present to recover that body and once the body has been recovered we can determine exactly what it is that has happened.”

City officials confirmed the fatal attack at Kogel Bay Resort which is near Gordon’s Bay, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the city centre, in the eastern stretch of the large False Bay.

“A body boarder was fatally attacked and sadly passed away,” said Gregg Oelofse, head of environmental policy and strategy

Officials in the top tourist city are mulling a trial shark net for top swimming beach Fish Hoek where three attacks, two deadly, have taken place.

Last week, coastal authorities warned beachgoers around the tourist town of Knysna that sharks were moving into the area, feeding on the remains of a whale that had run ashore more than 400 kilometres east of Cape Town.

The attack is the second shark fatality along South African shores this year after a swimmer was killed in waist-deep water at Second Beach in the rural Eastern Cape in January.