Shark mauls diver to death, as daughter watches in horror

A woman in her 20s watched her father being attacked and killed by a "large" shark off Tasmania’s Maria Island when the duo went diving for scallops. The tragic incident took place on Saturday morning, the police said.

The Guardian reported that the father, a man in his late 40’s, was from southern Hobart suburb of Kingston, had gone diving with his daughter at around 7 am on Saturday. The daughter, swam up to the surface with the scallops she had collected but got worried when her father did not surface after her. She dived back into the water and to her horror, found a large shark attacking her father. She returned to the boat to make an emergency phone call and set off the flare in order to raise an alarm.

Inspector David Wiss told reporters that the man was pulled out of water by the air hose that he was attached to, by the nearby boaters who had come to the rescue of the father-daughter duo. But it was too late since he was already fatally injured. Inspector Wiss declined to provide details on the nature of the injuries sustained by the man.

It is still unknown what kind of shark had attacked the man since the woman was too traumatised to be able to describe anything more about the shark than that it was "large." According to the Guardian, a 4.5 metres long white pointer shark was spotted by fishermen on Friday, which they had reported to the local marine authorities. But no radio warning had been issued after that to alert the coast guard or the local police officers.

“When there are sightings the general practice is to send out warnings across marine radio,” Wiss said. “My understanding is that the local police officer wasn’t aware of any warning that went out.”

According to the CBS News, the last shark attack off the Australian coast that had turned fatal occurred in February, when a 3 to 4 metre long white shark had attacked a Japanese tourist while he was surfing at Ballina which located nearly 1000 miles north of the spot where the attack on Saturday took place.

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