Nice white shark that tore aside RAF veteran was ‘provoked’
A 35-year-old British man was killed final yr in a brutal shark assault – however a researcher has now make clear simply how the incident passed off.
Simon Nellist, a diving teacher and former UK Royal Air Force serviceman, died in February 2022.
Witnesses mentioned a 15-foot nice white shark attacked the expat at Buchan Point southeast of Sydney, Australia.
It was the Australian metropolis’s first deadly shark assault on its seaside since 1963.
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Now, the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) has categorised Nellist’s dying as a “provoked incident”.
Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, informed The London Times Nellist was “in no way intending to provoke” the shark.
However, he famous the 35-year-old had been swimming in an space the place individuals had been fishing.
Naylor added: “We find that a large fraction of bites that are reported to us occur where people are fishing and there is chum or bait in the water.
“Fishing brings bait fish closer to shore than they might otherwise be, and sharks often follow.”
An unnamed eyewitness informed the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the time that he had been fishing off close by rocks when he noticed Nellist get dragged underwater by a big shark in an assault that lasted a number of seconds.
“He was yelling at first, and then when he went down, there were so many splashes,” he mentioned. “The shark won’t stop.”
In 2022, ISAF investigated 108 alleged assaults worldwide in 2022.
They additionally confirmed that there had been 57 assaults of unprovoked shark bites on people, and 32 provoked bites.
The world database of all identified shark assaults, run by the Florida Museum, classifies “provoked incidents” when a “human initiates interaction with a shark in some way”.
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