Why do shark attacks occur and how frequently do they happen?
A German tourist tragically lost her life after a shark bite on Monday while sailing near Spain’s Canary Islands, according to the coastguard.
The 30-year-old woman suffered the loss of a leg during the incident and subsequently died from a heart attack while being airlifted by a Spanish rescue helicopter, as reported by a coastguard spokesperson to AFP.
She was sailing on a British catamaran in the Atlantic, approximately 278 nautical miles southwest of Gran Canaria, when the attack took place. Reports from Reuters indicate that she was swimming next to the catamaran when the shark struck.
Emergency services received a call at 1255 GMT for a medical evacuation and dispatched a military plane and helicopter after reaching out to the Moroccan coastguard.
The woman was transferred onto the helicopter around 1800 GMT and was en route to a hospital in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, when she passed away, according to the spokesperson.
Boat-tracking website vesselfinder.com showed that the vessel, the Dalliance Chichester, had departed from Las Palmas on September 14.
Shark attacks are infrequent, with 69 confirmed unprovoked incidents globally and 14 fatalities reported last year, as per the International Shark Attack File managed by the Florida Museum of Natural History and the American Elasmobranch Society. The report highlighted that a disproportionate number of deaths from shark bites occurred in Australia last year compared to other nations, with Australia accounting for roughly 22% of the world’s unprovoked shark attacks in 2023.
This fatal incident comes less than a month after a shark killed a 16-year-old high school student in Jamaica.
In July, a surfer lost a leg following an attack by a great white shark in Australia. The previous month, surfer Tamayo Perry died from severe injuries sustained in a shark attack off Oahu, Hawaii.
In January, a young fisherman diving for scallops was killed by a shark off the Pacific coast of Mexico.