A swimmer was left seriously injured after a shark bit him in the torso, arm, and hand just 100ft from a lifeguard station in Southern California.
The 46-year-old man was swimming in the ocean at Del Mar City Beach alongside roughly a dozen other people on Sunday morning before he was struck by the predator.
Chief Lifeguard and Community Services Director Jonathan Edelbrock said the lifeguards were setting up on the beach for the day when they were alerted to the incident.
No one had spotted the shark when the attack happened, Edelbrock added.
The victim, who regularly trains at the beach, suffered significant but not life-threatening injuries following the bite to his torso, arm, and hand.
A 46-year-old men was attacked by a shark on Sunday morning at Del Mar City Beach. He had his torso, arm, and hand bitten by the predator
Del Mar City Beach is popular with swimmers and surfers and is located in Del Mar, San Diego County, Southern California
Edelbrock said the man 'was conscious and oriented, relaying some information to the treating staff members' after the incident.
He was dashed to Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla where he underwent treatment, city officials said, adding thatlifeguards saw a swimmer helping another swimmer and quickly rushed over, not immediately realizing it had been a shark attack.
The city also deployed a drone and a boat to look for the shark following the attack with no success.
'The water visibility was really poor,' Edelbrock said.
'You just can´t see anything that´s moving through the water column at all. The exact moment of the incident was really the only interaction with, or sighting of, the shark.'
Authorities said a stretch of the beach will remain closed for surfers and swimmers until Tuesday morning.
Images of the beach taken after the incident show a red sign, warning: 'Closure. Shark incident, do not enter'.
Torrey Pines State Beach south of Del Mar remained open, according to its website and the nearest San Diego city beach, Blacks Beach, remote but popular with surfers, is more than 5 miles from the attack and remained open, a city lifeguard official said.
It wasn't immediately clear what kind of shark was involved in Sunday's attack.
The incident comes after another swimmerhad part of her thigh bitten off by a shark in November 2022 while swimming in the same waters at Del Mar Beach.
Lyn Jutronich was swimming with a partner before taking a short rest in the water when she felt something bump into her leg.
'I felt a huge, like a really hard hit right, I don't know how else to say this, like right between my legs and it pushed me,' Jutronich told ABC 10 in San Diego at the time.
Lyn Jutronich had a chunk of her thigh bitten off by a shark in November 2022 while swimming in the waters at Del Mar Beach
A person at the beach caught the moment that Jutronich was seen getting help from lifeguards after being bitten
'I looked down and I saw the shark bite my thigh,' said Jutronich.
'Fortunately, it released. It shook maybe one time, that's where I have the tears from, and then released,' she told NBC 7.
Jutronich said everything happened so quickly that some of the events remained unclear.
After alerting her swimming partner of the attack in a panicked frenzy, they headed back to shore where she was rushed to hospital after the shark had bit off a chunk of her thigh.
Lifeguards at Del Mar Beach later confirmed that Jutronich had been bit by a juvenile great white shark.
'For having being bit by a shark, I'm doing pretty well,' she later told KSWB.
'My friend sent me an article that said I should buy a Powerball ticket because apparently, the chances of winning the power ball are less than being attacked by a shark so I've got that going for me.'
The Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File said there were two unprovoked shark attacks in California last year - one being fatal.
With 20 unprovoked attacks recorded since 1926, San Diego County, which includes Del Mar, led California counties for shark related incidents, the file's data shows.
But Daytona Beach in Volusia County, Florida, has had the highest concentration of unprovoked attacks globally with 351 since 1837, according to the file, released in May.
Florida as a whole has had 928 since records began, followed by Hawaii with 195 and California with 138.
Florida University's International Shark Attack File tracks attacks around the world
The number of attacks trailed by far the figure in Florida, 16, which represented 44 per cent of biting incidents in the country last year, according toFlorida University's International Shark Attack File
In 2023, there were 16 attacks - more than anywhere else on the planet.
On the country-wide level, the US tops the list with 1,640 attacks, followed by Australia with 706.
There was a slight increase in the number of attacks last year, but they remain extremely rare and fatal or life-threatening attacks are even less common.
There were 69 unprovoked bites in 2023 globally, according to the report, compared to the previous five-year average of 63 attacks - meaning you are more likely to win the lottery than get bitten by a shark.
Of those, ten were fatal, up from five the year before: four people died in Australia, two in the US and one each in the Bahamas, Egypt, Mexico and New Caledonia.
Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Museum of Natural History's shark research program said: 'This is within the range of the normal number of bites, though the fatalities are a bit unnerving this year.'
In total, the US had 36 unprovoked attacks, accounting for half of incidents worldwide.
