Three decades have passed since the movie Jaws sent terrified bathers scrambling out of the ocean. But as any beach lifeguard knows, there’s still nothing like a gory shark attack to stoke public hysteria and paranoia. In the first four months of this year, there were four fatal shark attacks worldwide, compared with one in the whole of 2007.
California suffered its first deadly attack by a great white shark in almost 50 years yesterday when a swimmer was killed 50m from a popular beach near San Diego as he took part in a triathlon training session. David Martin, a 66-year-old retired veterinarian, was swimming with a group around 22km north of San Diego early on Friday when the shark attacked.