Australian authorities are hunting a large saltwater crocodile in the country's remote far north that is believed to have killed a British man while he was snorkeling.
The world's top mining company, BHP Billiton, said the victim was technical services superintendent Russell Harris, 37, who had worked at the company's Gemco mine on Groote Eylandt — an island off Australia's Northern Territory — for the past five months.
Harris disappeared on Saturday while snorkeling with another man off the island while their partners remained on the beach. Police found his body on Sunday about 1 mile from where he was last seen.
Harris' body was being flown to the tropical northern city of Darwin on Monday for a post mortem, but police said his injuries were consistent with a crocodile attack and that a 13-foot crocodile had been seen in the area.
"We are trying to locate the crocodile and relocate it to a different area," a police spokeswoman said on Monday.
A spokeswoman for BHP Billiton said the company was arranging to fly members of Harris's family and those of his American wife to Darwin.
About a dozen people have been killed by crocodiles in Australia in the past 20 years. In August, a 60-year-old man was dragged out of a canoe and killed by a crocodile in northeastern Queensland.
