Investigations are underway in New Caledonia to find the body of a fisherman who, according to witnesses, was the victim of a shark attack, rescue services said Thursday.
Two fatal attacks have already taken place since the beginning of the year in the French archipelago in the South Pacific.
"Our boat is still there but nothing has been found and no one has yet gone to the police or the gendarmerie to report a disappearance," Alexandre Rossignol, communications manager, told AFP. civil security.
The alert was given on Wednesday by fishermen who told the emergency services that they had witnessed a shark attack on an underwater fisherman "sunk to the bottom" off a beach in Nouville, a peninsula to the north. west of Noumea.
“It was very quick.
We saw eddies on the surface, it was a shark that was attacking it (...) We saw the flapping of the fins above the water and then nothing more ”, told them. witnesses daily Les Nouvelles-Calédoniennes.
Significant air and sea assets were deployed but the search was unsuccessful, the local government said in a statement.
Attacks multiply
The town hall of Nouméa has issued a decree prohibiting swimming and nautical activities in the coastal strip of 300 meters of this area located on a peninsula, until Sunday included. For its part, the Southern Province authorized for 72 hours within a radius of one nautical mile around the site of the alleged attack the collection of bulldog sharks and tiger sharks. Several sharks have been captured, including a 4.30 meter tiger shark, and will be autopsied.
At the end of April, in this same area of Nouville, a 53-year-old man was found dead on his water sports board, after being bitten by a shark in the leg, while in February a boater was fatally attacked in the 'Îlot Maitre, a very touristic site off the coast of Nouméa. Two suspicious disappearances at the beginning of the year, for which the hypothesis of a shark attack is not ruled out, are also the subject of investigations by the Nouméa prosecutor's office.