A missing surfer is feared dead after he was attacked by a shark at one of Australia’s most popular surfing spots, police said on Tuesday.
Steven Payne, a 37-year-old man holidaying from Melbourne was seen in distress in chest-deep water at the remote Wharton Beach in Western Australia on Monday.
Witnesses heard screams before the surfer vanished following a shark attack. His surfing board, showing evidence of bite marks, was retrieved from the water later but his body remains missing.
“The family has been notified," Western Australia police commissioner Col Blanch told Perth radio station 6PR. “I suspect it will be a recovery of a body if we can find it.”
The search resumed on Tuesday, but police confirmed there were no hopes of finding Mr Payne alive.
“Unfortunately, that search has not recovered the surfer’s body — I can also confirm that our search is a recovery, not a rescue,” senior sergeant Chris Taylor told reporters.
“There’s only so much of the bay you can keep searching over and over.”
He added that drone footage shot by a witness showed a shark swimming away from a cloud of blood close to the shoreline.
The family of Mr Payne said they did not expect him to be found. The man was travelling with his girlfriend when the incident took place. The couple had planned to meet his family in Western Australia later in the week.
Police said emergency services were called to Wharton Beach at around 12.10pm local time on Monday following reports of a possible shark attack.
"There were screams,” beachgoer Joscelin Boissieux said, adding that the surfer’s partner could only watch in horror. “There were people saying like ‘get out’, everything. It was a very panicked moment," she told 9News.
She said witnesses scrambled to get out of the water as the surfboard floated metres from the shore. “The water next to it was dark, with a shark’s fin circling around,” Ms Boissieux recalled.
The beach was shut, with signage at the entrance warning visitors of a shark in the area, as police, Marine Rescue and State Emergency Service personnel launched a search operation.
The surfer’s suspected death would be the fourth in a shark attack in the area since 2017. Two of the attacks reportedly involved great white sharks.
The death of two local people in shark attacks in 2020 had rocked the coastal community.
Shark attacks are rare in Australia with 255 fatal bites recorded since 1791 in the country of 27 million, according to the Australian Shark Incident Database.
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