Swimmer killed by stingray, two mauled by sharks in Australia
- Continent’s coastlines see one swimmer dead and a surfer and a fisherman injured over the weekend
A swimmer died after a rare suspected stingray attack off an Australian beach while another two people were mauled in separate shark encounters this weekend.
The 42-year-old’s death came more than a decade after world famous “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was killed when a stingray barb punctured his chest on the Great Barrier Reef.
The man was in waters off Lauderdale Beach some 23km (14 miles) from Hobart in Tasmania on Saturday when he “sustained a puncture wound to his lower abdomen … possibly inflicted by a marine animal”, police said. He was taken onto the beach by friends but suffered a heart attack and could not be resuscitated.
“It’s consistent with [a stingray injury] but further investigation ... may be able to give a bit more of a concrete fact,” Tasmania Police Senior Constable Brett Bowering told the Sunday Tasmanian.
Stingrays rarely attack humans but the barbs at the end of their tails are coated in toxic venom which they use to defend themselves.