A triathlete in training swimming with 10 others at Fletcher Cove was bitten once on the legs by a shark, and died from blood loss this morning. My heart goes out to relatives and friends. Hopefully this incident will be portrayed respectfully and accurately in the media. This was an unfortunate incident, but it is important to remember that it is also extremely rare – there was only 1 death world wide last year from sharks.
Update from one of the dive lists I’m on: A group of research divers from Scripps was in the same location this morning and noted very bad visibility because of plankton blooms. The few shark bites that do happen are frequently in very low visibility situations – the shark can sense there is a mammal near with electroreception and lateral lines but mistakes the victim for a normal prey animal, like a seal or sea lion. This is why most attacks are just bites – once the shark realizes that it bit something it wasn’t expecting, it releases and usually doesn’t bite again. Unfortunately because of the size of great whites, one exploratory bite can enough to cause death by blood loss.