(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
The Washington Post
A 36-year-old Italian surfer died after being impaled by a sharp-billed fish while surfing in west Indonesia.
Giulia Manfrini suffered a "freak accident” while surfing in the Mentawai Islands, a remote island chain, said James Colston, who along with Manfrini co-founded the travel agency Awave.
"Unfortunately, even with the brave efforts of her partner, local resort staff and doctors, Giulia couldn't be saved,” Colston said Sunday in his statement on Instagram. "We believe she died doing what she loved, in a place that she loved.”
Lahmudin Siregar, acting head of the Mentawai Islands Regional Disaster Management Agency, told Indonesian news agency Antara that a swordfish leapt toward Manfrini and struck her in the chest, leaving her with a five-centimeter cut.
The Hidden Bay Resort Mentawais said in a statement that Manfrini, whom it called a "client and friend,” was "surfing one of the friendliest waves in the region” when she was "hit in the chest” by a fish and "died almost immediately.”
The resort said she was hit by a needlefish - like the swordfish another long fish with an elongated jaw, though the two come from different families.
Run-ins with swordfish and needlefish are rare but not unheard of: In 2015, a fishing boat captain died on Hawaii Island after being struck in the chest by a 40-pound swordfish he had just speared, according to the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.
In 2023, Italian surfer Alberto Marcon was left with a punctured lung after an encounter with a needlefish off the coast of Sumbawa, another Indonesian island, according to digital publication Surfer. The year before, a tourist was stabbed in the neck by a needlefish while swimming at a beach in southeast Thailand, according to the Bangkok Post.
Two witnesses, who were also foreign nationals, provided first aid and transported Manfrini to a nearby health center, Antara reported, but she did not survive.
The Hidden Bay Resort said it provided "all the necessary support to help with the procedures for repatriating” Manfrini's remains, but it was not immediately clear Wednesday if her body was still in Indonesia. The Italian Embassy in Jakarta did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post.
Fabio Giulivi, the mayor of the Italian town of Venaria Reale, where Manfrini was reportedly from, said in a Facebook post that news of her death "has left us shocked and makes us feel powerless in front of the tragedy that took her life so prematurely.”
It was Manfrini's "double dream” to surf and open a sports-focused travel agency, Giulivi said. "And so, in the prime of life, she passed away in such a tragic way in the Indian Ocean,” he added.
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