Surfer Dies After Shark Attack In Sydney

Just after 10am on Saturday, at Long Reef beach, beloved surfer, father, and longtime local Mercury Psillakis was attacked by what has been repeatedly described as a ‘large shark’.

“There was a guy screaming, ‘I don’t want to get bitten, I don’t want to get bitten, don’t bite me,’ and I saw the dorsal fin of the shark come up, and it was huge,” a witness at the scene told Sky News Australia.

Mercury was pulled from the water by other surfers, but had lost too much blood and died at the scene, said police superintendent John Duncan of Sydney’s Northern Beaches unit.

“He’d suffered catastrophic injuries,” Duncan told a televised press conference. “Unfortunately, it would appear that a large, what we believe to be a shark, has attacked him. And as a result of that, he lost a number of limbs. His colleagues managed to make it back to the beach safely, and a short time later, his body was found floating in the surf, and a couple of other people went out and recovered it.”

The police said two sections of a surfboard were retrieved and would be examined by experts.

This is the first attack in the Northern Beaches in at least three years. The beaches between Manly and Narabeen have been closed.

Our hearts are with the Psillakis family.