Lifeguards were taking down the signs that warned that waters were closed due to a shark attack on Saturday. NBC 7’s Audra Stafford reports.
A 46-year-old swimmer was still being treated at the hospital Wednesday after he was bitten by a shark while swimming with a group in Del Mar over the weekend.
Caleb Adams was taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla immediately after the attack to treat significant wounds to his torso and left hand and arm. Adams' wife on Tuesday evening told NBC 7 her husband remained hospitalized but was recovering from his injuries.
Adams was swimming with a group of about a dozen who regularly meet to train in Del Mar. Around 9 a.m., he was about 100 yards from the 17th Street lifeguard tower north of Powerhouse Park when the shark bit him, the city of Del Mar said.
Jenna Veal, a friend of the victim who was just feet away from the attack, told NBC's "TODAY" that the victim punched the shark in the face.
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"He was incredibly conscious and brave. I mean, he truly fought for his life on multiple fronts today, from the fact that he got bumped by the shark and bit, and then he punched it in the face, and then he was able to still call for help," the eyewitness said. "Then when we got all the way onto shore, he was able to respond to questions. Where we were, what the date was. He said, 'Could you call my wife? Here's her phone number.'"
Lifeguards closed a stretch of Del Mar Beach after the attack. The signs came down 48 hours later, which is standard policy after incidents like Sundays.
Researchers with Cal State University Long Beach's Shark Lab are using DNA samples to learn more about the presence of sharks in the area after the attack.
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"We were able to recover the wetsuit from the victim and take some swabs along the bite marks to recover DNA," Merson said. "At the same time, we’re taking water samples right off the beach here to see if we can recover white shark DNA as well, just from the environment, and see if we can identify how long this individual shark is remaining in the area."
Merson said Del Mar beach is a nursery habitat for juvenile white sharks, so they tend to gather there for long periods of time. Since 2020, they’ve tagged about 60 juvenile white sharks in this area and about four of those sharks were detected around the time of Sunday's incident.
Merson says it’ll probably take about a month to determine if they can actually detect white shark DNA in the water. Linking that specific shark will take even longer, as they need enough DNA to identify that specific shark.
Juvenile white sharks primarily eat things like stingrays, croakers, flat fish, all small creatures that live on the bottom of the seafloor. For them to target something that might be a seal or sea lion-shaped -- like a human -- is an uncommon occurrence, Merson said.
"It’s possible that it was an incidence of curiosity. Sharks don’t have hands like we do, so when they encounter unknown objects in their territory, they have to investigate using their mouth," Merson said.
Despite the incident, scientists are not seeing as many as they have in past years in the area, so Merser said it's interesting that the bites happened during a kind of lull in shark activity.
At its height, Del Mar has had up to a dozen or more sharks here at once, according to Merson. An abundance of sharks does not necessarily correlate with an increase in shark encounters or an increased risk for people.
In November 2022, Lyn Jutronich was out for a swim with her swimming partner when she was bitten in the thigh by a shark. She was wounded but survived.
Also in 2022, on Christmas Eve, a surfer in the Northern California town of Morro Bay was attacked and killed by a great white.
Last week, a stretch of San Clemente beach, just north of San Diego County, was closed due to what authorities called aggressive sharks.
