Three sailors were rescued on Wednesday, September 6, by Australian maritime authorities after small sharks, known as cookie-cutter sharks, attacked and deflated their 29-foot inflatable catamaran in the Coral Sea.
The incident took place as the group was sailing from Vanuatu in the South Pacific towards the northern Australian city of Cairns.
The sailors, two Russians and a French national, were retrieved from the ocean unharmed on Wednesday. Evgeny Kovalevsky, one of the Russian sailors, said that the cookie-cutter sharks were responsible for the damage. He mentioned that this event wasn’t his first experience with these sharks; he had encountered them in the Atlantic Ocean over a decade ago when he was on another inflatable vessel.
According to an Instagram post by the sailors, the sharks first targeted their boat on Monday, September 4, causing damage to the “rear left ball” of the catamaran. Despite the damage, the sailors managed to travel roughly 100 miles before they faced another shark attack the following day. This second encounter disrupted the boat’s balance, making it start to sink.
In response to the situation, the crew sent out an SOS. A Panama-flagged container ship responded to their call approximately 45 minutes later. Given the circumstances, the captain made the decision to leave the sinking catamaran.
A radio beacon from the boat alerted rescue teams to its location. The sailors were eventually located around 1:30 a.m. by a Cairns-based Challenger Rescue Aircraft. After confirming the shark attack damage, the rescue team successfully transferred the sailors and brought them ashore near Brisbane, Australia by Thursday.
There were no reported injuries.