A harrowing shark attack took hold in the sea off Hadera, north-west Israel on Monday, with a swimmer heard desperately screaming “help” and “they’re biting me”. The predator had been spotted near other beachgoers in shallow water before it attacked the man close to the Orot Rabin power station.
The man flailed briefly before the water turned a chilling red, indicating he had been bitten. Beachgoers could only look on in dismay as a chaotic mix of fins and limbs thrashed in the water, but they were powerless to help. A search operation is currently underway for the missing individual, with emergency services and police involved, and the beach has been temporarily closed.
There hasn’t been a fatal shark attack in the waters off Israel since 1948. But the incident comes less than a year after 16-year-old Jahmari Reid was brutally attacked by a killer shark, ending his life in the most horrific way. The Jamaican schoolboy reportedly went spearfishing alone early in August 2024, off the coast of Montego Bay – a favourite spot for tourists. Tragically, he never made it back home.
The next morning, around 9am, Jahmari’s mutilated body was retrieved from the sea, following sightings of a huge tiger shark. The young lad had been decapitated, and his left arm was missing – injuries that align with a shark attack, as per a police report.
Another gruesome shark attack was reported in June 2023 when a 23-year-old holidaymaker was swimming just metres from the Rea Sea beach resort of Hurghada, Egypt. His injuries were so severe that he died within seconds, and just hours later, footage of the savage attack spread across social media.
This followed just months after two women were killed in the space of two days on the same stretch of coastline. And it’s not just the Red Sea, as the giant predators are lurking in waters around the world, including across parts of Australia and in the US, with Florida’s Gulf Coast becoming a ‘hotspot’.
And even on British shores, swimmers and surfers in Cornwall have been victims of shark bites, with basking shark sightings becoming increasingly common. Fatal attacks in UK waters luckily remain unlikely, but could we see changes as sea temperatures rise?
A BBC documentary looked into the reason we are witnessing more shark attacks than ever before, despite populations of the formidable fish depleting. The BBC One show, Why Sharks Attack, investigated why sharks are entering shallow waters of luxury resorts away from their natural hunting habits in the deep ocean.
Featured in the programme was Nour Farid, from the leading Red Sea conservation group HEPCA. He believes critically low fish stocks are directly impacting Red Sea sharks and is campaigning for fishing to be banned immediately.
Meanwhile Dr Laura Ryan, from Macquarie University, is researching whether Great Whites might be attacking people in a case of mistaken identity, where they confuse swimmers and surfers with their preferred prey of seals.
In recent times, researchers have come across sharks with shrunken livers, which is a sign of severe malnourishment. Therefore reports suggest some of the recent attacks could have been caused by hungry sharks being forced to hunt for prey that they wouldn’t normally eat, the documentary said.
“Banning commercial fishing is a must – the fish stock now is reaching a critical level, it is not sustainable,” Mr Farid added. Amid the shocking Red Sea fatalities, officials have introduced temporary fishing restrictions and have announced plans for a tagging programme to track and monitor larger sharks.
Technologies being developed to protect swimmers and surfers to help track movement with drone footage have been developed elsewhere in Australia, where the tracking is acting as ‘ariel lifeguards’. The New South Wales government have also invested in a tagging scheme to allow people to track moment on an app before jumping in the water.
Efforts have heightened after UK expat Simon Nellist, who swam regularly in the ocean around Sydney, Australia, was mauled to death by a Great White.
The species not only eats fish, but also mammals and commonly ambushes seals. However Dr Laura Ryan is researching whether they are now mistaking humans for seals due to an increasing number of people in the water.
Known as the ‘lions of the oceans’, Great Whites stalk their prey from underneath and explode through the ocean’s surface. Dr Ryan said that often, attacks can be down to an innocent error: “There are a few possible reasons why sharks can bite humans, it can be aggression or a human intruding their space. Or in a more exploratory nature, if they’re not sure what something is this could be how they investigate an object.
“There is also this theory of mistaken identity which really stems from the idea about white sharks and mistaking humans more visually as potential prey items, specifically seals.”
The giant species, around 6metres long, lack colour vision and can’t see fine details like we can, the documentary stated. Dr Ryan has spent time studying seals to see how sharks might view them in an attack, and has compared this to images of swimmers and surfers.
“The theory started around surfing, thinking the board was something that made us more similar, but there were a lot of similarities with the swimmer,” she added. The expert concluded that the silhouette could be enough for a Great White to confuse a human with its regular prey.
The investigation also heard from the University of Florida’s professor Gavin Naylor, who delved into the evolution of sharks and the reasons why Florida and Australia are two of the world’s hotspots for attacks.
And also from marine ecologist, Dr Lucy Hawkes from the University of Exeter, who was the first scientist to catch and tag a silvertip shark in the Red Sea. “We need sharks,” she said. “These are predators in their natural habitats looking for something to eat that are confused because they’ve bumped into a human.”
So far, there have been 16 ‘publicly reported and verified’ shark attacks in 2025, four of which were ‘provoked’ and five ‘fatal shark attacks’, according to trackingsharks.com. In 2024, there were 76 shark attacks, 17 of which were ‘provoked’ and six ‘fatal attacks’, while three were reported as ‘possible scavenge’.
It is said that sharks are by far more under attack than humans thanks to illegal fishing of the predators, while one in five shark species are said to be endangered or vulnerable. “Fatality rates have been declining for decades, reflecting advances in beach safety, medical treatment and public awareness,” the International Shark Attack File said.
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