A male spearfisher has disappeared in the Mediterranean off the northern Israeli town of Hadera, following an encounter involving what is suspected to be a dusky shark yesterday evening (21 April).
“Officers from the Hadera police station and the marine unit were dispatched to the Hadera river following a report by individuals who claimed to have seen a shark attacking a diver in the water,” stated the police, though by the time the emergency services arrived there was no sign of the diver.
Also read: Diver dies at Red Sea observatory
UPDATE 24 April
The man who died following the shark encounter has been named as Barak Tzach, 40 – and he was not spearfishing, according to his wife.
He had entered the sea from the beach, as often before, “with his snorkel, goggles, flippers and a GoPro camera,” she stated in an online post. “He did not have fish or bait. He wanted to film the sharks, not to feed them or interact with them.”
A fisherman who witnessed the incident had, she said, confirmed that her husband filmed the sharks from a distance without touching or feeding them, but that when they approached him he had tried to fend them off with his GoPro extension pole. Tzach’s remains were found some 250m from where the fatal encounter occurred.
Four years ago, Hadera municipality had closed the beach to swimmers because of shark sightings, posting warning signs and imposing fines on anyone entering the water.
A municipal beach patrol scanned the area by jet-ski and stopped other people entering the sea. The search for the diver by naval and police officers and a scuba rescue unit continued until dark and was resumed at first light today.
Items of equipment were said to have been found just off Olga beach, and a body part was sent for forensic medical analysis.
Broke journey home
The missing diver is said to have been a man in his 40s, a father of four living in Petah Tikva more than 60km further south. His vehicle and belongings were found on the beach, and it is believed that he had broken his drive home from work to go spearfishing, either freediving or on scuba, near the mouth of the river.
Two days earlier, two female dusky sharks (Carcharhinus obscurus) had been reported within 50m of a beach further south at Beit Yanai, causing panic among bathers.
Video footage of their appearance was soon circulating online, with lifeguards’ instructions to swimmers to leave the water seemingly being ignored by people trying to get a close-up view of the sharks. Footage of the Hadera incident taken from the beach has also been posted online.
Dusky sharks are not generally considered dangerous and rarely interact with humans. However, beaches between Hadera and Netanya have been closed to water-users until further notice.
Drawn each winter
Back in 2018, Daniel Brinckmann wrote on Divernet about the large numbers of requiem sharks that assemble near Hadera every winter, attracted by the 25°C waters routinely discharged from the Orot Rabin power-station.
He described his dives in the area and attempts to photograph the dusky sharks that can grow up to 4m long and weigh 350kg, as well as the endangered sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus) they have to some extent been displacing.
Brinckmann called them top predators deserving of ”respect, protection and research”, especially because the conservation status of the species was described as “Data Deficient”. The sharks, mainly females, would usually arrive by early December and be departing by late March.
The phenomenon had boosted Hadera as a tourist town and weekend attraction but, with sometimes challenging diving conditions in poor visibility, Brinckmann recommended that only “environmentally conscious divers who have seen sharks before and both appreciate and respect the animals” should consider diving there.
If the loss of the diver is confirmed as having been the result of a shark encounter, it would be the first fatality and only the fourth documented injury-causing incident in Israel’s waters over the past 80 years.
Also on Divernet: STOP RIDING SHARKS, AUTHORITY TELLS DIVERS, SHARKS ASSEMBLE IN THE MED
