Reports suggest that the shark involved in the attack was a great white. Elias Levy/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
On Friday morning, a male boogieboarder was killed in an apparent shark attack while surfing in the area of “The Pit” in Morro Bay, Calif. just north of Morro Rock Beach in San Luis Obispo county. At 10:39 a.m., SLO County Fire stated that they were responding to a medical emergency in that area and the Morro Bay Police Department announced the victim dead at the scene by 10:48 a.m. According to an official statement from the Morro Bay Police, the victim was unresponsive when he was pulled from the water. He has yet to be identified.
According to the San Luis Obispo Tribune, the man’s body was found floating in the waves by a fellow surfer. “As we were arriving, there was a female surfer in the water that was assisting the victim that apparently saw him a little distance away from where she was, face down in the water,” said Morro Bay Harbor Director Eric Endersby. “About that time, we arrived on scene … so we took over. It was an apparent shark attack victim, definitely deceased, no possibility of resuscitation.”
Endersby says the attack appeared to be recent, with no evidence that the body had been in the water very long. “It’s tragic and we’re all sad, especially given the time of year this occurred,” Endersby said.
The last shark attack in SLO County happened in 2019 off of Montana de Oro State Park and was not fatal. The last fatal attack was in 2003 near Avila Beach.
The beaches remain open, but the public will not be allowed in the waters near the incident for at least the next 24 hours. We will have more on this story as information becomes available.
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