CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines—Beachgoers in El Salvador City and Opol town, Misamis Oriental are staying away from the beach after fishermen reported seeing sharks feeding on unidentified human remains some 10 kilometers off the coast on Tuesday morning.
Fernando Vincent Dy Jr., an official of the Misamis Oriental Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO), said a group of fishermen reported seeing a human torso floating in the open water at about 9 a.m. Tuesday.
When they went to retrieve the remains some two hours later, Dy said they saw an undetermined number of sharks feeding on the remains.
Dy said the sharks ate all of the remains and there was nothing left to identify.
“Sharks have been seen before in the waters off El Salvador,” Dy said.
Dy said they have not determined whether the sharks were responsible for the death of the still unidentified person or whether the cause of death was something else.
He said they have not received any missing person report that would point to the identity of the reported human remains.
Dy said they were advising the public to exercise caution when swimming in the beaches of El Salvador and adjoining Opol town, at least until after the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) has identified the kind of shark that fed on the remains.
Jun Bacolod, provincial fisheries officer of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), said sharks have been known to inhabit the waters off El Salvador and in Opol before.
Based on descriptions, Bacolod estimated the sharks that fed on the remains to be three meters long.
But Bacolod said the descriptions were not enough to determine the sharks’ species.
Bacolod said shark sightings happened often in the surrounding seas but reports of attacks have been rare.
The sea off El Salvador is part of the Macajalar Bay, a deep water bay of the Bohol Sea.
Fishermen have routinely caught sharks in the bay, along with other fishes. SM