Shark attack kills teenager off Port Douglas

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/15/shark-attack-kills-teenager-port-douglas

Version 0 of 1.

A teenager has died after a shark attack on a reef off Port Douglas in far north Queensland.

The shark attack victim has been identified as Daniel Smith, 18, who was taken by friends on a tour boat to Port Douglas’s Sugar Wharf at about 11.30am.

He had been bitten on the upper thigh, the ABC reported, while swimming at Rudder Reef. A spokesman said police understood from early distress reports that the youth had lost part of his leg.

Queensland ambulance service executive operations manager Greg Thiedecke told reporters that Smith went into cardiac arrest immediately after he was attacked and was likely to have died shortly after from severe blood loss.

“It would be speculating but (there are) a lot of large blood vessels in the groin area, so for him to go into cardiac arrest that quickly would be probably blood loss,” Thiedecke said.

“If you lose all your blood, you can’t live.”

Julia Leu, mayor of the Douglas shire, said the victim was a much-loved local high school graduate.

“Our hearts very much go out to his family,” she told ABC. “It is a real shock to all of us that this has occurred.

“He had just completed year 12 at Mossman state high school - he was a lovely fellow and we are very, very sad that this has happened.”

It was the fourth fatal shark attack in Australia this year, the last being expatriate Englishman Paul Wilcox at Byron Bay in New South Wales in September.

A police spokeswoman said it appeared it was the victim’s friends who had rendered first aid on the tour boat.

A crowd which had gathered showed signs of distress after the victim’s body arrived on a small speedboat, Newsport, a local online news outlet, reported.

Veteran diver Col McKenzie, who also heads the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, told AAP Rudder Reef was not a common spot for dive tourism operators.

But he said it was popular with spear fishing enthusiasts, and there was a fatal shark attack at nearby Opal Reef almost a decade ago to the day.

Spearfisherman Mark Thompson, 38, died from a heart attack soon after being attacked by a shark December 11, 2004.

St Crispin’s reef separates Opal and Rudder reefs, and there is little distance between them.

Mr McKenzie said spear fishers who were attacked by sharks typically suffered thigh injuries because they often tucked bait into their weight belts.

“A lot of people do spear fish in that area but whether that’s what’s happened here, I don’t know,” the Cairns resident said.