Three Sydney shark attacks in 26 hours leave two in critical condition

By Lex Harvey and Jack Guy, CNN

(CNN) — A 12-year-old boy is “fighting for his life,” a man in his 20s was left in critical condition and an 11-year-old boy escaped with only damage to his surfboard in a spate of shark attacks at beaches in Sydney, Australia.

The first attack took place at 4.20 p.m. local time Sunday (12.20 a.m. ET), the second just before lunch Monday and the third around 6.20 p.m. local time Monday, according to local authorities.

On Sunday, friends pulled the 12-year-old boy out of the water after he was bitten by a shark in Sydney Harbour, and the child is now in critical condition at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Australian authorities said.

“It was a horrendous scene at the time when police attended,” Superintendent Joseph McNulty, Commander of the New South Wales Police Marine Area Command, said at a press conference Monday.

“We believe it was something like a bull shark that attacked the lower limbs of that boy yesterday.”

He praised the boy’s friends for pulling him from the water onto a rock face, calling their actions “nothing but brave.”

It was “very confronting injuries for those boys to see, but I suppose that’s mateship,” he said.

Upon reaching the unconscious boy, emergency responders applied tourniquets to his legs to stop heavy bleeding before transferring him to a police boat.

Police officers performed CPR on the boy as they rushed to shore, where an ambulance was waiting.

McNulty said the boy and his friends had been leaping off a popular six-meter (20-foot) rock into water turned brackish by heavy rain over the weekend. Brackish water is a mix of salt and fresh water that can attract sharks seeking food closer to the shoreline.

“We believe the combination of the brackish water, the fresh water, the actions of the splashing, may have made that perfect storm environment for that shark attack,” he said.

“He is in for the fight of his life now, and the actions of emergency services yesterday gave him that chance,” McNulty said.

Giles Buchanan, an official from NSW Ambulance, said by the time the boy reached them, “it was a resuscitation situation.”

“It was touch-and-go the entire time, and still he’s in a very dangerous position,” Buchanan said.

Less than 24 hours later, a shark took a bite from the board of an 11-year-old boy who was surfing further up the coast at Dee Why Point, the Northern Beaches Council confirmed. It said the boy was not injured in the attack.

Preliminary assessments by the NSW Department of Primary Industries said the 15-centimeter (six-inch) bite was probably from a bull shark.

Schools in Sydney are currently out for the summer break, meaning the beaches are busy with school-age children.

Later Monday, a 25-year-old man suffered serious leg injuries in a shark attack at North Steyne Beach, in the suburb of Manly, local police said in a statement Monday.

He was treated at the scene by paramedics and taken to Royal North Shore Hospital, where he remains in critical condition.

“All beaches on the Northern Beaches are closed until further notice, and this will be reviewed on an ongoing basis,” police added in the statement.

Manly is one of Australia’s best-known beaches and is a popular tourist spot that receives around one million international visitors a year.

In a statement Monday, the Northern Beaches Council said that all ocean beaches in the area, except for Palm Beach, were closed over the weekend and into Monday “due to dangerous surf conditions.”

Australia sees roughly 20 shark bites every year, with two or three fatalities.

In November, two tourists from Switzerland were bitten by a shark in Crowdy Bay, eastern Australia. A woman in her 20s died in the attack.

However, shark attacks in Sydney are exceptionally rare, with only three fatalities in the past 60 years, including a 57-year-old man who was killed by a large shark while surfing at a Sydney beach in September.

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CNN’s Hilary Whiteman contributed to this report.