Israeli police scour Mediterranean for swimmer feared attacked by shark

Officers launched a search after receiving reports a swimmer had been attacked by a shark on a beach near the city of Hadera (Ariel Schalit/AP)

Israeli police were scouring the waters off the country’s Mediterranean coast for a swimmer who they fear may have been attacked by a shark, in an area that for decades has seen close encounters between marine predators and beachgoers who sometimes seek them out.

A shiver of endangered dusky and sandbar sharks has been swimming close to the area for years, attracting onlookers who approach the sharks and drawing pleas from conservation groups for authorities to separate people from the wild animals.

Nature groups say these warnings went unheeded and on Monday, police launched a search after receiving reports that a swimmer had been attacked by a shark on a beach near the Israeli city of Hadera.

A shark swims past people in the Mediterranean Sea near Hadera (Ariel Schalit/AP)

Israel’s Fire and Rescue Authority announced on Tuesday afternoon that they had found remains of a body, which was taken to the forensic institute for identification.

On Tuesday, the beach near Hadera was closed off as search teams scoured the sea by boat and underwater equipment for the swimmer. The man’s identity was not immediately known, but Israeli media said he had gone to swim with the sharks.

Israelis flocked in large numbers to the beach during a week-long holiday, sharing the waters with a dozen or more sharks. Some tugged on the sharks’ fins, while others threw them fish to eat.

Dusky sharks can grow up to four metres (13 feet) long and weigh about 350kg (750 pounds). Sandbar sharks are smaller, growing to about 2.5 metres (eight feet) and 100kg (220 pounds).

Yigael Ben-Ari, head of marine rangers at Israel Nature and Parks Authority, said it was not known how the man believed to have been attacked behaved around the sharks, but he said members of the public had a responsibility to recognise that they should not enter the waters and definitely should not touch or play with the sharks.

Israeli Police were searching the area for a missing swimmer (Ariel Schalit/AP)

One video shared by Israeli media showed a shark swimming right up to bathers in thigh-deep water.

“What a huge shark!” the man filming exclaims, as the shark approaches him. “Whoa! He’s coming toward us!”

“Don’t move!” he implores a boy standing nearby, who replies “I’m leaving.”

The man then asks: “What, are you afraid of the sharks?”

It would have been appropriate to take steps to preserve and regulate public safety, but over the years, chaos has developed in the area

The behaviour, some of which was witnessed by an Associated Press photographer two days before the attack, flew in the face of the advice of the parks authority.

“Like every wild animal, the sharks’ behaviour may be unpredictable,” the authority said in a statement.

This would be just the third recorded shark attack in Israel, according to Mr Ben-Ari. One person was killed in an attack in the 1940s.

The area, where warm water released by a nearby power plant flows into the sea, has attracted dozens of sharks between the months of October and May for years. Mr Ben-Ari said swimming was prohibited in the area, but that swimmers entered the water anyway.

Israeli authorities closed the beach and others nearby on Monday (Ariel Schalit/AP)

“It would have been appropriate to take steps to preserve and regulate public safety, but over the years, chaos has developed in the area,” the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), an environmental group, said in a statement.

It said fishermen, boats, divers, surfers and snorkelers intersected dangerously with a wild animal that “is not accustomed to being around crowds of people”.

SPNI said that further steps were needed to prevent similar incidents, such as designating a safe zone from where people could view the sharks without swimming close to them.

Israeli authorities closed the beach and others nearby on Monday.