The attack was the second shark fatality in the country's waters this year, about a month after surfer Lance Appleby was killed off the Southern Australia coast, per BBC and CBS News. It was also the third attack in Queensland in less than three months, ABC News reported.

On 2 January, surfer Lance Appleby was killed by a shark at Granites Beach in South Australia. Just days earlier, on 28 December, 40-year-old chaplain Luke Walford was fatally bitten while spearfishing near the Keppel Bay Islands in Queensland.