A fire engine. (drawing) – PHILIPPE HUGUEN / AFP
The lifeless body of a man was found on his water sports board off the coast of Noumea after having been the victim, according to the first elements of the investigation, of a shark attack, said Sunday the prosecutor of the Republic. It is a boater who alerted the sea rescue services at the end of the day on Saturday after discovering on the surface an inanimate fifty-something on a “stand up paddle” board (rowing board), off Nouville, peninsula to the north -west of Noumea.
According to New Caledonia the 1st, traces of bites were reportedly found on the knee of this 53-year-old man, who was descending into the waves from a beach south of Noumea. “At this stage, a death following a shark attack is indeed the hypothesis retained by the investigators,” said the public prosecutor, Yves Dupas, in a statement, specifying that forensic investigations would probably take place on Monday. An investigation into the causes of death has been opened.
Regular attacks
This attack comes after the death at the end of February of a 57-year-old man, near a very touristy islet in a bay of the Caledonian capital. He had been bitten in the leg by a tiger shark over four meters. Between February 24 and March 2, the disappearance of a swimmer and then of a boater in Nouméa, in conditions previously unexplained, could also be consecutive to attacks by sharks, sedentary in the waters near the city, according to experts.
Regularly, the Noumean beaches are subject to alert to sharks, such as tiger or bulldog, which worry the authorities. In March, the southern province carried out a “targeted harvest” of 24 sharks of these two species, “selected according to their size and their aggressiveness” in the large harbor of Noumea and on a reef.