Shark kills swimmer off Western Australian city beach

The attack took place off Sorrento Beach, in Perth (Andrew O’Connor/Australian Broadcasting Corp via AP)

A man has been killed by a shark as he swam off a Western Australian city beach, police said.

Search boats and helicopters extensively searched the ocean off Sorrento Beach in Perth’s northern suburbs after the late morning attack without finding any trace of the victim.

But police were confident the “swimmer died as a result of the attack”, the statement said.

Witnesses reported seeing blood in the water.

Beach walker Jacqui Rapaic told Australian Broadcasting Corp: “My friend said: ‘Jac, I think there’s been a shark attack,’ and I looked out to the ocean and I could see a pool of blood.”

Local Ryan Rowe reached the beach soon afterwards and said he was was told by an onlooker “someone had been bitten by a shark”.

“I couldn’t believe there was that much blood (that had) come out of a human body,” Mr Rowe told The West Australian newspaper.

Authorities closed the beach to swimmers. The witnesses had identified the swimmer as a man, but no further details have emerged.

On Monday, a surfer sustained a serious leg wound in a shark attack near Geraldton, about 250 miles north of Perth.

There have been five fatal shark attacks in Australia this year.

Three spearfishing divers were killed by sharks off the Australian coast in four weeks over May and June.

In January, a 12-year-old boy died in a hospital days after he was mauled by a bull shark in Sydney Harbour.

Australia has averaged between two and three fatal shark attacks a year since 2000, according to the Australian Shark Incident Database, a partnership of the Taronga Conservation Society Australia, Flinders University and the New South Wales state government.