A man was killed in an attack of sharks off the Hadera coast, the police confirmed on Wednesday, after human remains were positively identified by legal medicine experts.
The victim was appointed Barak Tzach, 45, father of four children from the central city of Petah Tikva.
Tzach’s wife Sarit Tzach wrote on Facebook that her husband had gone to the beach on Monday after work so that he could document the sharks and denied information that he had worn dead fish that attracted the predator.
“He entered the sea equipped with a snorkel, a mask, a fin and a GoPro camera-without anything else, and certainly no fish or bait, unlike rumors,” she wrote.
“Barak goes in the water to dive and document the sharks, not to feed them or play with them,” she said, adding that a fisherman who was on the scene told her that her husband had photographed the sharks at a distance, but had not touched them or fed them.
“When they started to approach him, he used the Gopro camera stick to push them slowly,” wrote Sarit. “The fisherman shouted to return to the beach, and Barak started swimming slowly in his direction – then he was attacked.”
Shark fins are represented when swimming in the Mediterranean Sea off the Hadera coast in the center of Israel on April 22, 2025 (Jack Guez / AFP)
Tzach was identified one day after the police said they had recovered “conclusions” during their in progress research for the missing man who had been attacked by a shark.
Research on Stream Hadera beach has enlisted life divers, jet ski and helicopters to find the man disappeared. The police closed the beach as well as neighboring beaches for swimmers until further notice.
People on the beach filmed the incident on Monday, an extremely rare shark attack in Israeli waters, with their phones.
A man could be heard exclaiming: “Wow, Wow, he is with the shark, he fights it”, as the man was seen in the distance. “They eat it, eat man … I can’t see him.”
The shark swimming in the Mediterranean Sea while Israeli police search the region of a swimmer who, according to them, was attacked by a shark on Monday, near Hadera, on April 22, 2025. (AP Photo / Ariel Schalit)
An eyewitness of the attack told Channel 12 news that Tzach had shouted: “” I was bitten, I was bitten. “He agitated his hands in the air, and after a few minutes, the Sharks dragged him to them.”
The woman told the television network that she had seen “three sharks and a huge blood pool. Since then, it has been as if he had disappeared. We saw it all happen, then he suddenly disappeared. ”
דיו Ard חים דרמטי 19 pic.twitter.com/dfbablfuj1
– שלמה ⛈️ מזג) (@mezgavirir) April 21, 2025
It was only the third shark attack recorded in Israel, according to Yigael Ben-Ari, head of the Ranger Marine Force of the authority of the Parks and Nature Authority. A person was killed in an attack in the 1940s.
The area, where lukewarm water released by a neighboring power plant flows into the sea, has attracted dozens of sharks for years between October and May. Ben-Ari said that swimming is prohibited in the region, but swimmers enter the water anyway.
A shark is swimming in front of the people of the Mediterranean Sea in Hadera, April 19, 2025. (AP photo / Ariel Schalit)
The Sabriques and Sabriques sharks, which frequent the area, are not known to attack humans.
The Israelis flocked to large numbers to the beach during the Passover week holidays, sharing the waters with a dozen or more sharks. Some have shot the Sharks’ fins, while others threw fish to eat them.
The shark in Hadera was filmed by passing between children in Israel without anyone taking any measure a few moments before the attack. https://t.co/rnwhoxuqdm pic.twitter.com/mvxmllvehq
– News deleted. (@Suppressnws) April 21, 2025
Dark sharks can reach four meters (13 feet) long and weigh around 350 kilograms (750 pounds). The sand bench sharks are smaller, reaching approximately 2.5 meters (8 feet) and 100 kilograms (220 pounds).
In the past few days, the fish have been dying in the Hadera stream and the nearby Alexander stream have attracted sharks on the shores of Hadera and Beit Yannai. Sharks eat dead, sick and injured fish when they enter the sea, helping to keep natural waters clean.
Nature and Parks Authority said on Monday that it “repeats its warning … against interaction with sharks. We call on the public again not to approach sharks, which are protected animals. ”
The agencies contributed to this report.
