A 66-year-old fitness aficionado swimming with fellow triathletes off a North County beach was killed Friday in a shark attack -- the first such ocean fatality to occur in the San Diego area in at least 14 years.

Retired veterinarian David Martin was about 150 yards offshore, just north of Fletcher Cove, when he was attacked -- apparently by a great white shark -- shortly after 7 a.m., according to city officials.

Martin's friends heard him screaming for help and helped him back to shore, lifeguard Capt. Craig Miller said.

Both of Martin's legs had been nearly torn off, and he was pronounced dead at a nearby lifeguard station about an hour later.

Martin, who had lived in Solana Beach for 38 years, was an expert swimmer who was taking part in a regular 4-mile swim with eight other members of a triathlon club at the time of the attack, city spokesman Steve Didier said.

Authorities described the deadly shark encounter as a highly unusual occurrence.

"This is something that is unheard of ... in this area," Miller said.

Solana Beach Mayor Joe Kellejian said the attack had left the local community "deeply saddened."

"We are all shocked and dismayed at the event that happened here this morning," he said during a midday briefing at Fletcher Cove.

Crisis counselors were called in to offer assistance to Martin's "emotionally distraught" companions, sheriff's Sgt. Randy Webb said.

The fatality prompted authorities to close area beaches and issue a 72-hour water-safety advisory for an 8-mile stretch of shoreline from Torrey Pines to South Carlsbad State Beach.

"I want to implore everybody to please stay out of the water," Kellejian said.

Despite the warnings, some surfers and swimmers were venturing into the ocean Friday afternoon at Swami's and Beacons beaches and other spots not far from the site of the attack, according to news accounts.

A sheriff's helicopter crew, meanwhile, scanned the North County coastline through the day "to track any possible shark activity," Didier said.

The animal that killed Martin almost certainly was a great white shark, 12 to 17 feet long, said Richard Rosenblatt, professor emeritus of marine biology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. (An Autopsy has confirmed that the shark was a Great White)

"I was told the victim was pushed up out of the water in a violent attack," Rosenblatt told reporters.

Such a method of attack is "typical great-white behavior," Rosenblatt noted, adding that the victim's wounds were "really quite clean and massive."

The shark may have mistaken the group of swimmers to be a pod of seals, Rosenblatt said.

"We think it's mistaken identity," he said.

The water where the attack occurred was about 25 feet deep, with a sandy bottom, officials said.

The U.S. Coast Guard sent a helicopter to the area to aid in efforts to find the animal that attacked Martin. The oceanography professor, however, called the odds of finding it "pretty slim."

Officials said they had no intention of trying to capture the shark should they manage to locate it.

David Ott, Solana Beach city manager and public safety director, urged the public to "remain calm and have respect for nature."

"Even though these instances are a rare occurrence, we should remember that the coastline is a marine environment and it's a shark's natural habitat," Ott said.

Though great whites do not live off the San Diego-area coast on a permanent basis, they do pass through those waters their regular migrations, Rosenblatt said.

Local attacks on people, however, are rare in the extreme, he added.

The last one involving a fatality may have occurred off the coast of Sunset Cliffs in April 1994, when a woman's shark-ravaged body washed ashore.

The county Medical Examiner's Office ruled that 25-year-old Michelle Von Emster died of a shark attack. According to Rosenblatt and other experts, however, the woman might have drowned before sharks found and fed on her body.

Prior to that incident, the most recent recorded shark death in San Diego County occurred in the La Jolla area in 1959, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History's Shark File.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 30, 2008 02:36 PM: Message edited by: Great White ]</font>