A 39-year-old man has died after a shark attack at Kennedy Shoal off Queensland’s north-eastern coast, police said on Sunday. Kennedy Shoal is a shallow reef about 45 kilometres (28 miles) from shore and roughly 160 kilometres south of Cairns.
Emergency services were called to the Hull River Heads boat ramp just before 12:00 p.m. The man was pulled from the water and taken ashore, where ambulance crews met him; he died shortly afterwards, the Queensland Police Service and Queensland Ambulance reported.
Police said the man was retrieved from the water and succumbed to his injuries at the boat ramp. Investigations into the circumstances of the attack are ongoing.
This is the second fatal shark incident in Australia this month. On May 16, a 38-year-old man was bitten off an island near Perth in Western Australia.
Around 20 shark attacks are recorded in Australia each year, conservation groups say, and most are not fatal. Authorities note that drowning on the country’s beaches is a more common cause of death than shark encounters.
Earlier this year in January, dozens of beaches along the east coast, including in Sydney, were closed after four shark attacks occurred across two days. Those incidents followed heavy rainfall, which can create murky coastal conditions that both attract sharks and reduce visibility for swimmers.
Scientists monitoring shark activity say recent increases in attacks may be linked to changes in shark migratory patterns, as well as growing human use of coastal waters and warming ocean temperatures.
Edited by: Natalie Muller