(NewsNation) — Shark biologist Greg Skomal believes the death of a 55-year-old California swimmer after a shark attack was something of a “mistake.”
Firefighters recovered the body of Erica Fox on Saturday in Santa Cruz County, after witnesses in the area reported seeing a shark with a human body in its mouth.
“There’s some account that she may have actually separated from the group because she’s a different, more proficient swimmer that might have isolated her and this shark, you know, we think these are mistakes,” Skomal told NewsNation.
“This shark made a mistake, but those kinds of mistakes, as we’ve learned here, can be deadly,” he added.
On Dec. 21, Fox went out for a routine swim with a large group of people when she went missing, her disappearance then triggered a 15-hour search through Monterey Bay that included aircraft, drones, boats and divers.
She wasn’t seen again until authorities found her body on Saturday, still in the black wetsuit, nearly 30 miles north in Davenport.
Her body had a device known as a shark band, an electromagnetic tool, meant to disrupt a shark’s hunting senses.
“They work some of the time, but, you know, environmental conditions, other situations, they don’t work 100% of the time,” Skomal said of such devices.
“There’s no single technology out there that’s going to work 100% of the time,” he added.