Sharks involved in fatal Egypt attacks were sex-crazed and territorial – expert

The creatures responsible for two fatal shark attacks in Egypt may have done so because they were sex-crazed and protective of their eggs.

Two women were killed in the water within 600m of each other off Sahl Hasheesh in the Red Sea at the beginning of the month resulting in police closing the beaches.

The first victim was a Romanian woman whose body was found "disfigured" drifting on coral on Sunday (July 3), two days after she was reported missing.

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The second victim, Elisabeth Sauer, 68, was savagely mauled by an unseen shark while snorkelling.

Horrifically she was seen swimming back to a pier after her arm and leg were bitten off, and died afterwards from nervous shock in an ambulance.

Following the attacks, local environmentalists have clocked on to the reason the aggressive and out-of-character killings occurred.

Egyptian Streets reports that the local environmental committee believes it is no accident that attacks occurred during the shark's mating season.

This occurs from mid-April to the end of July and can cause sharks to behave more violently to those that stray across them.

And chillingly, some experts believe that the two killings could have been done by the same territorial 'rogue shark'.

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Sam Purkis, the chair of the Department of Marine Geosciences at the University of Miami, says it was "possible" that the same shark was involved.

"Most sharks are pelagic – open-water – and humans would never normally overlap with them, but the Red Sea is different," the expert added to the Sun Online.

"I was in the Red Sea in 2020 to tag sharks for conservation purposes. We spent seven weeks searching, and in that time, only found four. Humans are bad for sharks, they want fatty creatures like seals and tuna. We are like a bony chicken wing with no sauce on in comparison."

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