Shark kills 59-year-old Australian tourist off crowded beach in New Caledonia

‘There was blood everywhere, we could see it from the beach’

A 59-year-old Australian man was killed by a shark when he was swimming near a crowded beach in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, just days after another person was injured in a similar attack.

The tourist was swimming about 150m from the shore of the popular Chateau-Royal beach in the capital Noumea on Sunday when he was attacked.

The man was bitten several times and suffered injuries on his arms and legs, AFP reported.

Two people who were sailing their boats nearby rushed the tourist back to shore, where civilians and emergency services tried to resuscitate him.

Despite the efforts, he succumbed to his injuries.

The attack led other swimmers to rush out of the water to safety as lifeguards evacuated the beach.

Paramedic Vincent Ouradou told local broadcaster La 1ère that the tourist had been bitten at least "three times" on his arms and legs. He added that first responders spent nearly 40 minutes trying to save the man.

“It happened so close to shore, the poor victim was face down in the water when the jet ski got to him,” a guest at nearby Hotel Chateau Royal told Daily Mail Australia.

“There was blood everywhere, we could see it from the beach. So many people were in the water at the same time and they’d only reopened the beach a few days ago.”

Mayor Sonia Lagarde ordered the closure of most beaches in the area and called for the capture of tiger and bull sharks in nearby waters.

Drones were deployed to locate the sharks, while the local police investigated the circumstances of the attack. Two sharks were reportedly spotted just before operations were suspended at nightfall.

The incident occurred less than a month after a 49-year-old swimmer was seriously injured in a shark attack near the Chateau-Royal beach. A few days later, a surfer was also attacked by a shark but escaped without injury.

New Caledonia is located 1207km off Australia and ranks 13 in the world for the most number of shark attacks, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Sonia Backes, the president of New Caledonia’s Southern Province, said her thoughts were with the dead man’s family and the people who witnessed the incident.

“There were young children who were shocked by what they saw,” she said on Nouvelle-Caledonie 1ere.

According to reports, Ms Backes announced a tiger and bull shark culling programme – a long-debated practice in the region. In 2019, the Noumea council delisted tiger and bull sharks from the protected species list in an effort to reduce attacks.