Lovers Point in Pacific Grove was the site of an unconfirmed shark attack this weekend. Photo: Gene Giromini // Unsplash
Last week, Erica Fox went missing at Lovers Point in Pacific Grove, California. Witness accounts claimed to have seen her in the mouth of a shark, but further evidence as to what actually happened eluded searchers until now. As The Mercury News reports, her body has finally been found.
Fox was an experienced triathlete and the co-founder of the Kelp Krawlers, a Monterey Bay open-water swimming group. Around noon on Sunday, December 21, the group was participating in its weekly swim at Lovers Point when witnesses on the beach saw a large splash. Fearing a shark attack, the swimmers all returned to shore, but Fox was not among them. A search ensued, but was eventually called off a day later, after authorities spent 15 hours covering 84 square nautical miles with still no sign of her.
The only other clues of what happened to Fox came from a witness account to the Coast Guard. “The person who reported the shark sighting claimed they saw a shark breach the water with what appeared to be a human body in its mouth,” U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Christopher Sappey told SFGate. “They then witnessed the shark submerge below the waterline without resurfacing.” However, at the time officials had yet to find any corroborating evidence to back up the claim.
A week later, a woman’s body was found on what KSBW calls a “remote pocket beach” in Wilder Ranch, just beyond the northern tip of Monterey Bay. Though the Santa Cruz County Coroner’s Office has not officially released her identity, The Mercury News reports that, on Saturday afternoon, local law enforcement contacted Erica Fox’s husband Jean-Francois Vanreusel and informed him the body was hers.
According to reports, attached to Fox’s ankle was a “shark band.” The devices are marketed as being able to deter sharks using electromagnetic waves, but a 2018 study by Save Our Seas Foundation Project Leader Dr. Charlie Huveneers found the devices to have “limited to no measurable effect on white shark behavior.”
On Sunday, the Kelp Crawlers met at Lovers Point to celebrate Fox’s life. One of the members who spoke was Steve Bruemmer, who was attacked by a great white shark at Lovers Point in June 2022. “I was also bitten by a shark,” he said, “and I can tell you that it doesn’t hurt. I don’t understand why, but it’s not physically painful to be badly bitten. So I believe that in her final moments, Erica was not suffering in pain. And I hope that that can be of some comfort to people.”
