A 30-year-old German citizen died last night on board a Spanish Air Force helicopter that was evacuating her to a hospital in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria after being attacked by a shark in the Atlantic, 514 kilometers from the Canary Islands, Maritime Rescue confirmed to EFE.
The facts put forward by the digital newspaper The Atlantic today They occurred shortly before 4:00 p.m. (Canary Islands time) on the high seas, about 180 kilometers west of the city of Dakhla (Sahara).
The crew of the pleasure boat on which he was travelling, the British catamaran Dalliance Chichester, requested help at around 3:55 p.m. from the Spanish maritime rescue service, which shares international rescue responsibilities in the area with the Moroccan navy.
For this reason, Salvamento contacted the control center of his counterpart in Rabat, which requested that the emergency be taken care of by Spain, since it did not have resources in the area.
Maritime Rescue immediately alerted all vessels in the vicinity of the catamaran, one of which approached and was able to offer medication to its crew members.
A helicopter from the Air Force’s Search and Rescue Service (SAR) came to the aid of the injured woman from Gran Canaria, who took her on board at around 8:05 p.m., according to sources.
The woman, who had lost a leg in the shark attack, suffered cardiorespiratory arrest during the flight and arrived dead at the Doctor Negrín Hospital in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
The catamaran on which he was travelling had left on September 14 from the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria heading south, according to the route recorded by maritime traffic monitoring navigators such as marinetraffic.com or shipfinder.com.
According to the International Shark Incident Registry established by the Florida Museum of Natural History (USA), throughout history there have only been six confirmed shark incidents in the Canary Islands and one more likely.
None of them were fatal.
In the place where the incident occurred this Monday and its surroundings, no precedent has been documented. The closest, in addition to those in the Canary Islands, was reported in the African archipelago of Cape Verde.
