A man was killed in a shark attack while swimming off a city beach in Western Australia on Friday, police said.
Search vessels and helicopters scoured waters off Sorrento Beach, in Perth’s northern suburbs, after the late-morning attack. Despite the extensive search, authorities found no trace of the swimmer, according to a police statement.
Police said they were nevertheless confident that the “swimmer died as a result of the attack.”
Witnesses said they saw blood in the water following the incident.
“My friend said, ‘Jac, I think there’s been a shark attack,’ and I looked out to the ocean and I could see a pool of blood,” beach walker Jacqui Rapaic told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Local resident Ryan Rowe arrived at the Perth beach shortly afterward and said an onlooker told him that “someone had been bitten by a shark.”
“I couldn’t believe there was that much blood (that had) come out of a human body,” Rowe told The West Australian newspaper.
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Authorities closed Sorrento Beach to swimmers after the fatal shark attack.
Witnesses identified the victim as a man, but police did not release any further details about him.
The incident came days after a surfer suffered a serious leg injury in a shark attack near Geraldton, about 250 miles north of Perth, on Monday.
There have been five fatal shark attacks in Australia this year.
Three spearfishing divers were killed by sharks off the Australian coast in four weeks over May and June.
In January, a 12-year-old boy died in a hospital days after he was mauled by a bull shark in Sydney Harbor.
Australia has averaged between two and three fatal shark attacks a year since 2000, according to the Australian Shark Incident Database, a partnership of the Taronga Conservation Society Australia, Flinders University and the New South Wales state government.