A 12-year-old boy is in critical condition after being bitten by a shark in Sydney Harbour, officials said Monday.
The boy was jumping off rocks with friends near what is known as Shark Beach in the eastern Sydney suburb of Vaucluse when he was attacked Sunday afternoon by what officials believe was a bull shark, leaving him with severe injuries to both legs.
“He is in for the fight of his life now, and the actions of emergency services yesterday gave him that chance,” Joseph McNulty, commander of the New South Wales Police Marine Area Command, told reporters.
The attack comes after days of heavy rain that filled the Australian city’s iconic saltwater harbor with the freshwater that bull sharks favor.
“We believe the combination of the brackish water, the freshwater, the actions of the splashing may have made that perfect storm environment for that shark attack yesterday,” McNulty said.
McNulty said police arrived to a “horrendous scene,” where they commenced lifesaving procedures.
“The boy had lost his pulse, there was a large blood loss and the double tourniquet stemmed that flow of blood loss,” he said.
McNulty said that before police arrived, one of the boy’s friends had entered the water to pull him out, while another helped them out of the water.
“Those actions of those young men are brave under those circumstances — and very confronting injuries for those boys to see — but I suppose that’s mateship,” he said.
According to the Australian Shark Attack File, in the last decade the country has had an average of 20 shark incidents a year resulting in injuries to people, with an average of 2.8 fatalities per year. Far more people die from drowning and road accidents, it says.
