{"id":478547,"date":"2025-12-29T21:41:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T21:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/478547\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T21:41:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T21:41:12","slug":"body-of-triathlete-apparently-killed-by-shark-found-on-california-beach-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/478547\/","title":{"rendered":"Body of triathlete apparently killed by shark found on California beach | California"},"content":{"rendered":"

California<\/a> firefighters have found the body of a California triathlete on a beach north-west of Santa Cruz, almost a week after she went missing amid speculation that she was killed by a shark.<\/p>\n

The remains of Erica Fox were found on Saturday, her father and husband confirmed<\/a> to local news<\/a> outlets. Fox, 55, was part of a group of more than a dozen swimmers who left from Lovers Point near Monterey, California, on 21 December, but she never returned to shore. A witness driving by the area reported to authorities that they saw a shark with what appeared to be a human body in its mouth emerge from the water, according to the San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The disappearance and reports of the shark drew widespread public attention and efforts from authorities to locate Fox. On Sunday, Fox\u2019s husband, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Vanreusel, and other members of her swim club held a memorial walk along the Lovers Point coastline<\/a>. Fox\u2019s father, who confirmed the death to NBC Bay Area<\/a>, described his daughter as an empathetic and kind person who loved to swim, and who had taken part in numerous triathlons including the annual Escape From Alcatraz<\/a> challenge.<\/p>\n

Authorities last week launched a large-scale search and rescue operation involving multiple US Coast Guard boat crews along with responders from local fire and police departments to look for Fox. The Coast Guard suspended its search<\/a> last Monday for Fox after a 15-hour operation covering about 84 nautical miles.<\/p>\n

California firefighters announced on Saturday that they had recovered a body on Davenport beach, just south of Santa Cruz. The Santa Cruz county sheriff\u2019s office issued a statement the same day, citing an ongoing investigation into the death.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, at approximately 2:00 pm, a body was recovered from the ocean south of Davenport Beach. Due to the close proximity to the recent shark attack victim in Monterey County, our agency is working closely with the Monterey County Sheriff\u2019s Office and the Pacific Grove Police Department regarding the recovery,\u201d the Santa Cruz county sheriff\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n

Editor and fellow swimmer Sara Rubin, writing in<\/a> Monterey County Weekly, described Fox as a friend and passionate athlete who found peace in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty years ago, Erica Fox and a friend started swimming every Sunday at Lovers Point in Pacific Grove. Since then, multiple books have been written about the science of swimming and what it does for our brains. But Erica never needed a book to tell her what she knew through experience: Swimming in the ocean is a balm for body and mind, an adventure as much as a meditation.\u201d Rubin wrote. \u201cShe developed a deeply intimate relationship with the Pacific Ocean not by studying it or by looking at it, but by getting into it\u2014again and again and again, on choppy days and gloriously calm days, logging what I can only guess are thousands of miles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rubin said that Fox \u201cunderstood the risk\u201d of swimming in an ocean with a population of great white sharks, and would \u201cobject to framing this as an attack, and she would urge us to instead call it an incident\u2014an animal\u2019s behavior is just that\u201d.<\/p>\n

Although many species of sharks live off the California coast, violent incidents with humans are extremely rare. Prior to Fox\u2019s death, there have been 16 shark-related fatalities<\/a> in California in the past 75 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California firefighters have found the body of a California triathlete on a beach north-west of Santa Cruz, almost…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":478548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[50,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-478547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115805033888723200","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}