A few paddleboarders ignored posted signs warning that a great white shark still could be lurking below the surface, just a day after a swimmer was killed in a rare attack near San Diego.
“It’s like going to see Jaws — getting in the water the next day, all you could think about was the music,” said Bob Rief, 63, who was teaching a friend how to stand up on a paddleboard on Saturday. “But if you’re afraid of the ocean, you shouldn’t be in it.”
The San Diego-area native was worried that the attack would scare away vacationers or weekend beachgoers and hurt businesses. Solana Beach is 23km northwest of San Diego.
Despite the summer-like temperatures and cloudless skies that normally lure large crowds, beaches were mostly empty near where triathlete David Martin was killed on Friday.
A shark, believed to be a great white, lifted Martin, 66, out of the water with his legs in its jaws, leaving deep lacerations and shredding the retired veterinarian’s black wetsuit.
An autopsy on Saturday confirmed that Martin bled to death, as authorities had believed, the San Diego County medical examiner’s office said.
About 13km of shoreline from San Diego north to Carlsbad remained under advisory closure on Saturday as sheriff’s helicopters scanned the shore for signs of the shark — and for unwitting swimmers.
The beaches in San Diego will be patrolled throughout the weekend, city and county officials said. A weekend surfing competition in Encinitas, a seaside town north of the attack, was canceled because of safety concerns.
Few surfers dotted the normally crowded breaks off Tide Beach Park or Cardiff State Beach — perhaps as much because of shark fears as weak swells.
“I thought twice only because the waves are so small,” said Lynn Richardson, 63, a retiree who nosed his orange kayak straight out toward Tabletop Reef, where the shark struck.
A lifeguard with a megaphone called Richardson in for a stern talking-to but shrugged after Richardson said he was willing to play the odds.
Shark expert Richard Rosenblatt said on Friday that, judging by Martin’s wounds and the nature of the attack, the shark probably was a great white between 3.7m and 5m long.
Experts said the likelihood of finding the shark that attacked Martin was slim.
Great white sharks are rare in Southern California, though female great whites sometimes come south from their usual territory in the cooler waters of the central and northern coast to pup. Few attack humans instead of seals or sea lions, their usual prey.
Shark attacks are extremely rare. There were 71 reported worldwide last year, up from 63 in 2006. Only one attack, in the South Pacific, was fatal.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS