Three sailors on board an inflatable catamaran were rescued off Australia's northeastern coast on Wednesday after their vessel was attacked several times by sharks, CNN reported. Two Russians and one French national, ages 28 to 63, were on board the boat as it traveled from Vanuatu to the northeastern city of Cairns, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said in a statement.
AMSA said they responded to an alert from an emergency beacon at about 1:30 a.m. When rescuers arrived at the scene, they found both hulls of the men's 9-meter boat had been damaged after several shark attacks.
Photos and video of the rescue showed major damage to the boat, which was nearly submerged and a front section of one hull was completely missing.
A huge Panama-registered vehicle carrier, the 650-foot Dugong Ace, carried out the rescue operation around 835 kilometers (520 miles) southeast of Cairns in the Coral Sea.
The three men on board the boat were unharmed and are in healthy condition, said Anna Kosikhina, a spokesperson for the voyage. They are expected to arrive in Brisbane on Thursday.
“Now [the] travelers are safe, this is the most important thing. Unfortunately, the catamaran could not be saved. The fate of the expedition will be clear next week,” the spokesperson said.
Rescued sailor Stanislav Beryozkin said he suspected the sharks mistook his boat for a whale, as per a NBC report.
''There are many reasons why vessels are attacked by sharks. However, the motivations of these sharks are unclear,'' said Joe Zeller, the acting manager of the AMSA Response Centre.
''The emergency beacon absolutely saved their lives. It enabled the rescue coordination center to identify their precise location and empower the most appropriate and quickest response to rescue them,'' Mr Zeller added.
According to the Australian government, the Coral Sea is home to more sharks "than almost any other survey site in the world."
