A “large shark” fatally mauled a surfer to death at a beach near Sydney on Saturday, Australian police said, in a rare attack that led to a string of beach closures.
The 57-year-old local man had gone surfing with five or six friends in the Pacific waters off northern Sydney's adjoining Long Reef and Dee Why beaches, authorities said.
The man, an experienced surfer with a wife and a young daughter, lost "a number of limbs", New South Wales police superintendent John Duncan told a news conference.
"I do understand that both him and his board disappeared underwater," he told reporters.
"The body was found floating in the surf."
