How common are shark attacks in San Diego County?

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — Del Mar beaches will remain closed Monday night following a rare shark attack over the weekend. The swimmer is recovering in the hospital after being attacked about 100 yards offshore.

According to officials, the 46-year-old swimmer is in intensive care after undergoing surgery at Scripps Memorial Hospital following a shark attack off the coast of Del Mar.

Jon Edelbrock, Del Mar city lifeguard director, said lifeguards were already making preparations for the day before the pool opened when they noticed a commotion in the water. He said before he officially knew what had happened, he had already called paramedics for a quick response.

“I noticed the increased communication style and the running. I called dispatch up here on the North Shore and immediately called paramedics before we knew it,” said Del Mar Lifeguard Chief Jon Edelbrock.

Lifeguard chief Edelbrock said it took rescue workers only about four minutes to get to the scene. The man was then taken to hospital with a shark bite on his upper body, left arm and hand.

“The bite seemed consistent, the size, all that information. But of course we’ll wait for the scientists to provide more information,” Edelbrock said, referring to the possible bite from a juvenile great white shark.

Del Mar resident Dave Ballash said he saw the reaction. “Everyone was jumping out of the water in a panic, leaving everything, lifeguards with their binoculars, quite a spectacle,” he added.

Further investigation is now in the hands of the Shark Lab at Cal State University Long Beach, which swabbed the swimmer’s wetsuit and took water samples in the hope of capturing the shark’s DNA and determining what type of shark was involved in the attack.

Zach Merson, a field technician with CSULB’s SharkLab, said they have tagged about 60 sharks in the Del Mar area since 2020, noting that this area of ​​the ocean is a nursery ground for young great white sharks.

Merson said they spotted four sharks nearby at the time of the attack and those were just the ones they tagged, so there could have been more.

“There are sharks here every day. We monitor them through tagging and tracking, and they are here every day. And the number of incidents with humans is actually no higher at these collection points than at other collection points,” Merson said.

The beach will remain closed for 48 hours following the first incident, one mile north and south of where the shark attack occurred, and is expected to reopen Tuesday morning.

On Monday afternoon, lifeguards were seen telling people to get out of the water.

The last shark bite reported by FOX 5/KUSI in Del Mar, near the same location as this attack, occurred on November 4, 2022, when a 50-year-old woman was bitten in the upper thigh.

The previous shark attack occurred around the same time, just after 10 a.m. in the Del Mar beach area between 15th and 17th streets.

According to online reports, the last fatal shark attack in San Diego occurred on April 25, 2008, when 66-year-old David Martin was bitten in both thighs while swimming in Solana Beach. Martin was bitten by a great white shark at around 7:20 a.m. while swimming with other triathletes.