Hong Kong shark attacks: the blood-soaked chapter in city’s history that saw more shark deaths than any place on Earth
- Seven people were killed in shark attacks off the coast of Sai Kung from 1991 to 1995, triggering Hong Kong’s very own ‘Great Shark Hunt’
- While no fatal attack in 25 years is by any measure a good thing, that statistic hides a horror story of its own
Many questioned why Wong Kwai-yung chose to go swimming at Clear Water Bay First Beach in Hong Kong’s rural Sai Kung district in the early hours of June 13, 1995. It was a decision that would prove fatal for the Hong Kong housewife.
Shark attacks in the city’s eastern waters had already claimed two lives in the previous fortnight, and a total of seven deaths over a four-year stretch. Fears of more carnage that week had reached fever pitch.
But Wong had taken a daily morning plunge for years and was with a group of about 50 swimmers who still braved the waters that morning. She even warned her fellow paddlers to keep watch and to stay in the shallows close to the shore.
Witnesses said they first heard Wong scream at around 8am.
“I had just asked her whether we should get out [of the water]. She told me to go ahead and she would come later. When I got to the shore, I looked back and saw her floating in a pool of blood,” a friend and fellow swimmer told the Post at the time.
When Wong’s body was pulled from the water by a lifeguard, her left leg had been ripped off up to the hip, and her left arm was gone. Doctors later suspected there had been several sharks involved, given that they also found seven teeth marks in Wong’s abdomen and two in her right thigh, all between three and eight centimetres wide.
