Saturday, 20 Apr 2024

Divers return to shark-infested Red Sea two weeks after tourists mauled to death

Tourists along a shark-infested stretch of Egypt's Red Sea have been allowed back into the water – two weeks after two women were fatally mauled to death by sharks.

Diving activities have been allowed to resume across the Sahl Hasheesh region of the country, however, groups must stick to coral reefs and away from the open sea.

Water sports have also been allowed to continue but banana boats have been temporarily banned reports The New Arab.

READ MORE: Sharks involved in fatal Egypt attacks were sex-crazed and territorial, expert says

The relaxation comes just two weeks after two women were killed in the water within 600m of each other.

The first victim was a Romanian woman whose body was found "disfigured" drifting on coral on Sunday (July 3), two days after she was reported missing.

The second victim, Elisabeth Sauer, 68, was savagely mauled by an unseen shark while snorkelling.

Horrifically she was seen swimming back to a pier after her arm and leg were bitten off, and died afterwards from nervous shock in an ambulance.

Following the attacks, local environmentalists have clocked on to the reason the aggressive and out-of-character killings occurred.

Egyptian Streets reports that the local environmental committee believes it is no accident that attacks occurred during the shark's mating season.

This occurs from mid-April to the end of July and can cause sharks to behave more violently to those that stray across them.

And chillingly, some experts believe that the two killings could have been done by the same territorial 'rogue shark'.

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Sam Purkis, the chair of the Department of Marine Geosciences at the University of Miami, says it was "possible" that the same shark was involved.

"Most sharks are pelagic – open-water – and humans would never normally overlap with them, but the Red Sea is different," the expert added to the Sun Online.

"I was in the Red Sea in 2020 to tag sharks for conservation purposes. We spent seven weeks searching, and in that time, only found four. Humans are bad for sharks, they want fatty creatures like seals and tuna. We are like a bony chicken wing with no sauce on in comparison."

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