[imagesource: Randwick City Council / Instagram]

Yesterday, Sydney suffered its first deadly shark attack in 59 years.

Beaches were shut and authorities searched the coastline looking for the great white that mauled a male victim at around 4:30PM just off Little Bay in east Sydney.

Police believe they know the man’s identity and have informed his family but his name has not been released publicly.

Shark experts, on behalf of the New South Wales (NSW) government, said they estimated the shark was “at least three metres” in length based on footage filmed by a member of the public.

The BBC reports:

 Several passers-by who witnessed the scene have described a vicious and frenzied attack.

“(The person) was swimming and a shark came and attacked (them) vertically,” Kris Linto told Nine News.

“We heard a yell and turned around, it looked like a car had landed in the water, a big splash then the shark.”

A man who was fishing on nearby rocks at the time told reporters he saw the swimmer get dragged under. He said, “I am shaking. I keep vomiting. It’s very, very upsetting.”

Body parts were retrieved from the water within two hours of the attack.

A spokeswoman for the NSW Ambulance Services said the man “suffered catastrophic injuries and there wasn’t a lot paramedics could do when we arrived”.

NewsAU below:

Sydney University academic and author of the book ‘Flaws: Shark Bites and Emotional Public Policymaking’, Dr Chris Pepin-Neff, told NewsAU that attacks of this magnitude were “incredibly rare” and the victim was targeted by a “particularly nasty shark”.

“There have probably been only 10 or 12 attacks of this kind in the last 30 years in the entire world,” said Dr Pepin-Neff, who has previously urged against the overuse of the term “shark attack” for all human-shark encounters…

“It’s not crazy for sharks to bite humans thinking we might be prey,” he said.

“They test out things all the time. But 80 per cent of incidents are hit-and-run. Sharks will recognise humans as a ‘biological failure’ as we take more energy than we give so we are not a prey item. It’s a bite and release.”

The majority of shark-related fatalities are caused by blood loss from a single bite.

Obviously, this case is an outlier.

Australia’s most recent shark fatality occurred in Western Australia last year.

[sources:bbc&newsau]