Heroic friends pulled a 12-year-old boy from the water after being bitten by a shark in Sydney Harbour, but the boy remains “fighting for his life” in hospital, Australian authorities have announced.
“It was a frightening scene at the time police were called,” NSW Police Area Commander Superintendent Joseph McNulty said at a press conference on Monday.
“We believe it was some type of bull shark that attacked that boy’s lower leg yesterday.”
He praised the actions of his friends who pulled the boy from the water onto a rock wall, calling it “nothing short of brave.”
“It was a very difficult injury for the boys, but I think that’s the camaraderie,” he said.
Paramedics who arrived at the unconscious boy applied a tourniquet to his leg to stop the heavy bleeding before transporting him to a police boat.
Officers performed CPR on the boy as they rushed him to the beach, where an ambulance was waiting.
The boy is currently in a critical condition at Sydney Children’s Hospital.
Mr McNulty said the boy and his friends had jumped from the popular 6-metre (20-foot) rock into the water, which had turned brackish after heavy rain over the weekend. Brackish water is a mix of salt and fresh water that can draw sharks closer to shorelines in search of food.
“We think the combination of brackish water, fresh water and spray may have created the perfect storm environment for shark attacks,” he said.
“He’s in the biggest battle of his life right now, and the actions of the emergency services yesterday gave him that chance,” Mr McNulty said.
NSW Ambulance officer Giles Buchanan said the boy was “in a resuscitable condition” when he arrived at the ambulance.
“It’s been touch and go the whole time, but he’s still in a very dangerous position,” Buchanan said.
Less than 24 hours later, a shark bit the board of an 11-year-old boy who was surfing further up the coast at Dee Why Point, the Northern Beaches Council confirmed. The boy was not injured.
A preliminary assessment by the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries said the 15 centimeter (6 inch) bite was likely caused by a bull shark.
Approximately 20 shark bites occur in Australia each year, of which approximately two to three are fatal.
In November, two Swiss tourists were bitten by sharks in Cloudy Bay in eastern Australia. A woman in her 20s died in the attack.
But shark attacks in Sydney are extremely rare, with only three fatalities in the past 60 years, including a 57-year-old man killed by a large shark while surfing on a Sydney beach in September.
