A 22-year-old man was killed by a shark last Friday while diving for scallops off the coast of Sonora, Civil Protection authorities said.
The attack occurred in the Gulf of California near Playa Tojahui, a beach in the municipality of Huatabampo.
The victim, identified as Víctor Alejandro Soto García, was attacked by a great white shark and sustained a severe wound to his left leg, according to reports.
“The body of the young man was taken by his fishermen colleagues to the pier in Yavaros,” the Sonora Civil Protection agency CEPC said.
Yavaros is a fishing town about 20 kilometers southeast of the city of Huatabampo.
The CEPC said that the victim was a free-diving fisherman and wasn’t wearing a shark-repellant bracelet. State authorities last year distributed around 100 such bracelets to fisherman.
According to a report by the El Financiero newspaper, five fishermen were killed by sharks while diving for scallops off the coast of Sonora in 2022 and 2023.
The latest attack came just four weeks after a 26-year-old woman was killed by a shark while swimming at a beach in southern Jalisco.
A 76-year-old Belgian man died last month after he was attacked by either a shark or a crocodile at a beach in Ixtapa, Guerrero. Local officials issued a crocodile warning last week after videos of one wading in the surf and swimming near another beach in Ixtapa went viral.
With reports from El Financiero and AP
