A shark bit the legs off a young bodyboarder at a popular surfing spot in Western Australia on Sunday. The injuries proved to be fatal and authorities are now searching for the shark and the man's missing limbs.

The victim, who was in his early 20s, was bodyboarding with five friends when the shark attacked, according to a police spokesman. Police have identified the victim as Kyle James Burden. He had been only been living in Western Australia for the past three or four years. He was originally from Queensland.

The man died at the scene in the popular surfing spot, the Farm off Bunker Bay near the western town of Dunsborough. Authorities closed the beach off after the attack.

There were about 30 surfers in the water when the shark attack happened, according to a beachside café employee, Deb Pickett who later called police and an ambulance after the attack.

"We had some sharks spotted far out at sea a few months ago, but they never come this close to the shore," Pickett said in a report in a Reuters report.

Police haven't been able to identify the type of shark involved but reports have said it could be a 4.5 mm white pointer, bronze whaler or a tiger shark.

Local beaches remained closed on Monday as WA Department of Fisheries officers conducted an aerial search for the large shark. Police said there are no plans to kill the shark if they find it but any sharks they find will be herded out to sea.

Fisheries Department shark research scientist Rory McAuley said government departments aren't authorized to kill a shark unless it posed an immediate danger to people.

"There's no policy to hunt down a shark that may have killed someone and how we'd go about identifying a shark if we happened upon it today, I don't know because there could be any number of sharks in the area," McAuley said.

"As a scientist who's been out catching sharks for 15 years, I'd say that catching a shark, even if that policy is enacted, can be a trickier exercise than a lot of people would like to believe."

McAuley said that since the beaches were closed there would be minimal chance for another attack. He also added that there hadn't been any more fatal shark attacks in Australia than in the past but more people were spending more time in the water.

He said most encounters between people and sharks resulted in no injuries.

"Unfortunately there's no easy answer to why these tragic attacks occur."