Australian police were searching for a diver on Wednesday after his companion said he had been taken by a shark off the country’s rugged southern coast.
A police spokesman said the two men had been diving off a boat about 1.2 miles off Glenelg, near Adelaide in South Australia state, when the shark apparently struck. The second man managed to get back to the boat and raise the alarm.
No further details were immediately known, the spokesman said.
Australia has a reputation for shark attacks, with four fatal attacks in the past 14 months. International Shark File figures show most attacks occur in North American waters.
Last December, an 18-year-old surfer was killed off Glenelg beach by what witnesses described as a great white shark.
Most recently a tourist boat captain was bitten in half as he snorkeled off Australia’s remote west coast in March.
Australia’s first documented shark attack was in 1791 and there have been more than 625 attacks in the past 200 years, about 190 of them fatal.
