History repeating? Shark attack deaths occur near same resort as 2010 'Egyptian-Jaws'
A 68-year-old Austrian woman has died from massive shock after losing an arm and leg in a shark encounter in Egypt. And then, a day later, it was revealed by authorities that there had been a second fatality in the same area.
The Austrian woman was swimming at a resort near Sharm el Sheikh, and she bravely made it to shore, but succumbed to her injuries minutes after being put into an ambulance. The second victim, a Romanian, was killed just 650 feet from the first, both occurring on the same day.
The beaches were immediately closed and although shark attacks are rare in Egypt, there were a series of now infamous attacks in the Sharm el Sheikh resort that echoed those in the Steven Spielberg film Jaws (1975). Not just with multiple shark attacks over several days, but also including the authorities trying to cover it up. Egypt is a summer town; it needs summer Egyptian pounds.
In those astonishing series of attacks in the weeks running up to Christmas in 2010 there were five shark attacks – the same as the number of human attacks in Jaws - in as many days, which saw one of its injured victims die from her injuries. In those days of terror for tourists, The Red Sea became just that.
The first victim, a Russian woman swimming with her daughter, was attacked on her buttocks. Swimming just a few hundred yards away was another Russian woman, who was in her 70s, she was to be the second victim.
Her injuries included one of her feet being sheared off, a lacerated hand and again had her buttocks punctured. The attacks happening within minutes of one another, which should have put the authorities on high alert, but instead they did a Mayor Vaughn and decided to treat it as nothing more than a freak accident.
To quote Quint (Robert Shaw), sometimes that shark would go away, sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Well, in Sharm el Sheikh he wouldn’t go away and the very next day there was another attack.
The beaches remained open and hotel guests were not made aware that there had been sharks sighted in the area, which meant there were lots of them in the water and everyone was having a wonderful time, until a spotted shark sent shockwaves through those in the water and panic on the beach, with one woman saying “it was like a scene from Jaws.”
One male snorkeler did not hear of the shark, until it was too late, which resulted in his left arm being torn to pieces. But just like the day before another swimmer was almost immediately being attacked in exactly the same vicinity, this time only five minutes later.
Only then did the authorities decide to close the beaches, although it was going to be longer than 24 hours as they needed to make sure that the shark responsible for these attacks was no longer in the water. So, just like with jaws, boats were hired to hunt for sharks.
The aim was to capture the shark responsible and restore faith from tourists and assure those who were yet to arrive, sound familiar to anyone?
The boats came back with two sharks, an oceanic white tip (responsible for the deaths of the crew of the USS Indianapolis) and a short fin mako, which is what the fishermen in Jaws had thought they’d caught until Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) told them it was a tiger shark.
And just like that, locals felt they were safe and that a large predator that had supposedly injured some bathers had in fact been caught, and so three days after the fourth attack the beaches were back open.
The opening of those beaches would be a fatal error for a German tourist who was killed by a shark after going back in the water less than 24 hours after they were told it was absolutely safe to do so. They were snorkelling just 20 yards from the beach, where the woman in her 70s had both an arm and a leg ripped off, the injuries were deadly. Just when Egyptian tourists thought it was safe to go back in the water, it wasn’t, and the closed beaches sign made a return.
Before this series of shark attacks there had only ever been one recorded shark attack in Sharm el Sheikh. These seas were meant to be safe, so what happened to see these spike in shark attacks?
The story takes an interesting twist as researchers discovered that – amazingly – the mako that had been caught had been responsible for the attacks on the third and fourth victim, its bite marks acting like fingerprints. To catch that very shark involved was a 100-1 one shot.
It was also identified that the other shark responsible was an oceanic whitetip, just not the one that was captured. It was a shark, not the shark.
Both species are not coast dwellers, like the great white shark, bull shark and tiger shark which top the human attack rankings, so what was it that brought these normally deep ocean dwelling sharks to the shore and acquire a taste for tourists?
One theory is that it turns out that around 40 dead sheep had been thrown from a container ship in the area, and those sheep had started washing up on the coast, leaving a slick of food ripe for the taking, that could have acted like a trail of breadcrumbs to Sharm el Sheikh.
Another was that – although it is strictly forbidden – there was video evidence that divers were hand-feeding sharks which had conditioned the fish to bite the hand that they thought was feeding it.
They thought the arms of the attacked swimmers were holding out food, food which wasn’t there. This also explained why so many victims were attacked on the buttocks, as that is where the fish are stored on those hand-feeding sharks. Not that any of those snorkelling were part of that practice.
Like a dog or cat, the sharks had been conditioned to accept and expect rewards. Such practice – combined with the irresistible aromas of rotting sheep – created a perfect shark attack storm and gives a possible whole new meaning to food for thought.
It also showcases that this wasn’t the fault of the sharks, it was the gross irresponsibility of humans, but sharks are the ones who will continue to have a tarnished reputation because of it. And that shouldn’t be the case.
Words by Dean Newman
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