Shark Kills Man Surfing In Australian Beach, First Reported Attack This Year

A surfer was killed in a suspected shark attack Tuesday, May 18 at a beach in Australia.

The man, reported to be in his 50's, was surfing at Tuncurry Beach on the mid-north coast of New South Wales state.

Onlookers pulled the bloodied man off the waters and performed life-saving measures. Emergency services responded to the beach after receiving alerts about the shark attack.

"Bystanders, including a retired paramedic, did a valiant job pulling the patient from the water and commencing CPR before paramedics arrived," NSW Ambulance inspector Joshua Smyth praised.

The man suffered serious bite wounds on his upper right thigh, police said.

The man succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene.

"Despite the best efforts of paramedics and bystanders at the scene, the man could not be resuscitated," NSW Ambulance said in a tweet.

A drone scanned the area and spotted two sharks close to the shore, according to Lower North Coast Surf Life Saving branch president Brian Wilcox.

"It’s pretty unprecedented. I can’t recall ever having a shark attack in this area," Wilcox told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Tuesday’s attack was the first reported incident in Australia this year. The last known fatal shark attack in the country was in November last year when a 55-year-old surfer was killed in Broome.

"We'll ... do drone missions for the next couple of days, within the Tuncurry Beach area, just to make sure there are no sharks hanging around," Wilcox added.

According to the data collected by the Taronga Conservation Society, eight people were killed in shark attacks last year which was Australia's highest fatality rate since 1929.

In a similar incident, a 39-year-old Colorado woman was killed by a black bear last month. The unnamed woman was attacked by the giant predator while she had gone out to walk her dogs.

On April 30, the woman's husband found her half-eaten remains in the woods. A search party located a 10-year-old female bear thought to be responsible for the attack.

The bear along with her two cubs were "humanely" euthanized, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) confirmed in a statement. Necropsy of their bodies revealed human remains in the stomachs of the female and one of her cubs.