Beach section in California closed after man bitten by shark during group swim

SAN DIEGO – The upscale coastal town of Del Mar closed nearly its entire stretch of beach Sunday after a man participating in a group swim was attacked by a shark, officials said.

The 46-year-old was with about a dozen other swimmers who regularly meet for training in the cool waters north of the city of San Diego when the shark attacked him around 9 a.m., biting him on an arm, hand and torso, the city of Del Mar said in a statement.

He was taken to a San Diego hospital with “serious but not believed to be life-threatening injuries,” the city said.

A hospital spokesman said the facility could not provide precise information about the man’s condition.

The attack occurred about 100 yards from Del Mar’s relatively new lifeguard headquarters on 17th Street, the city said. Lifeguards on duty closed a section of Del Mar beach a mile north and south of the facility to swimmers and surfers until 9 a.m. Monday morning, the city said.

The city’s lifeguards are responsible for a 4 km long stretch of coast.

Torrey Pines State Beach, south of Del Mar, remained open, according to its website and phone line. The closest city of San Diego beach, Blacks Beach, while remote but popular with surfers, is more than five miles from the attack site and remained open, a city lifeguard said.

The incident occurred under relatively normal conditions for early June, including 3-foot waves and a water temperature of 64 degrees Fahrenheit, still suitable for a wetsuit, according to the National Data Buoy Center.

The attack occurred in unseasonably cool and cloudy “June Gloom” weather as the coastal region of San Diego County prepared for the annual influx of tourists, many of whom are part of the traditional exodus from Arizona and its hellish summer heat.

Research published in April in the journal Frontiers of Marine Science shows that juvenile great white sharks tend to stay closer to shore during spring and summer and may adjust their movements in response to “microscopic” changes in their habitat, such as water temperature.

It was not immediately clear what type of shark was involved in the attack on Sunday morning.

According to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File, there were two unprovoked shark attacks in California last year, one of which was fatal.

The number of attacks was far lower than Florida’s 16. Florida accounted for 44 percent of all unprovoked incidents in the country last year and about a quarter of all unprovoked incidents worldwide.

With 20 recorded unprovoked attacks since 1926, San Diego County, which includes Del Mar, leads California counties in the number of such incidents, the file’s data shows.

Despite Sunday’s incident, those involved in the unprovoked attacks were primarily active in board sports such as surfing and bodyboarding, the file says.