Shark attacks swimmer and bites him on three different parts of his body

A closure sign on Del Mar City Beach, California after a man was attacked by a shark (Picture: Hayne Palmour IV/Shutterstock)

An ocean swimmer was seriously injured in a shark attack near San Diego in Southern California.

The 46-year-old man was bitten in the torso, left arm and hand off Del Mar City Beach in Del Mar on Sunday morning.

He was rushed to hospital, where his injuries were described as significant but not life threatening.

The man regularly trains at the beach and was swimming with a group of around a dozen people when the shark attacked about 100 yards (91 metres) from a beach lifeguard station.

Lifeguards were setting up for the day when they were alerted to the incident, said chief lifeguard and community services director Jonathan Edelbrock.

No one had seen the shark when the attack happened, he explained.

‘The water visibility was really poor,’ he said. ‘You just can’t see anything that’s moving through the water column at all.

‘The exact moment of the incident was really the only interaction with, or sighting of the shark.’

The beach was closed after the attack and swimmers and surfers will not be allowed back in the water until Tuesday morning.

A drone and a boat were deployed to look for the shark afterwards with no success.

Resident Marina Vassiliades told NBC affiliate KNSD: ‘I was shocked, honestly. This is the beach that I go to, I’m a local and this is the restaurant I frequent every Sunday for brunch.

A woman wades in up to her knees in the water as lifeboat passes by in the area where the man was attacked (Picture: Hayne Palmour IV/Shutterstock)

‘A little too close to home, but the water is their home. I will still come to the beach,’ she added.

Another swimmer was attacked by a shark on the coast of Del Mar in November 2022. She was bitten in the upper thigh.

Last week a popular beach in San Clemente, miles (66km) north of Del Mar, also closed after a shark bumped a surfer off his board.

The man was bitten 100 yards from a life guard station (Picture: Hayne Palmour IV/Shutterstock)

In April a British man was mauled in several places in a horrific attack off the Caribbean island of Tobago.

Peter Smith, 64, ended up in intensive care after the enormous bull shark bit his left hand, left thigh and stomach.

Dovi Kacev, marine biologist and assistant teaching professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, told KNSD shark attacks are still very rare and can be compared to ‘vending machine falling down on people’, in terms of how often they happen.

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