News has just reached us regarding a shark attack last Friday (11 April), when a French windsurfer was bitten by a shark approximately 500m off the beach at El Yaque. The shark bit the man’s foot clean off, but fortunately a Club Mistral instructor managed to get him back to the beach by boat and then to hospital, where he has been treated – and is doing well considering the circumstances!

To put this in perspective though, an incident like this has never ever happened before at El Yaque – indeed there has never even been a shark spotted that close to the beach before. The local fisherman can’t believe it – they’ve never heard of anything like it before. The chances are that it was simply a freak occurrence – maybe the windsurfer fell off right on top of the shark, who snapped at him instinctively, much the same as a dog would if you jumped over a fence and landed on top of him. It would seem that most of the locals and visitors are of this opinion – everything has now calmed down and most people are back out sailing again.

We’ll bring you any more news as and when we get it