Shark Kills Optometrist Thomas Smiley, Swimming Off Hawaii's Ka'anapali Beach

A California man died Saturday after being attacked by a shark off the west coast of Maui, Hawaii. The man was pulled ashore the Ka'anapali Beach Park area with a leg missing.

Maui Police spokesman Lt. Gregg Okamoto identified the man as 65-year-old Thomas Smiley, an optometrist who was visiting from Granite Bay, California, with his wife. Smiley was swimming at Honokowai Point, about 60 yards from shore in clear waters, roughly 20 to 25 feet deep. At the time of the incident, the winds were light with one-foot-long surf.

A witness in a nearby hotel called 911 just before 9 a.m. HST (3 p.m. EDT). A helicopter and jet ski were deployed by Maui’s Department of Fire and Public Safety for rescuing Smiley. He was unconscious when rescuers pulled him out of the water and performed CPR on him.

"As we got closer, I saw some blood on his stomach and then I got looking a little bit more and his wrist, it looked like the skin on his wrist was just torn off," Allison Keller, a witness who was present at the scene, told Hawaii News Now . “And then I got looking closer and his entire left leg from his knee down was just missing.”

Smiley died at the scene. Following the incident, warning signs were put up at the Ka’anapali beach, alerting vacationers not to swim in the waters. The signs remained in place till midday Sunday.

Michael L. Domeier, president and executive director of the Marine Conservation Science Institute, who has been studying sharks for the last 30 years, told Fox/CW-affiliated Khon2 that fatal shark attacks were not common.

"Your chances of getting attacked by a shark and even not surviving are less than one in 12 million," he said. "It's a gut-wrenching thing when it happens. And we all think about it when we hear about in on the news and no one wants to be on that part of the food chain.”

However, according to the Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Aquatic Resources, Saturday's attack was the sixth such deadly encounter with a shark in Hawaii this year. Three swimmers were attacked by a shark in 2018. Out of over 120 attacks on record since 1995, this was the fifth fatal attack in the islands. The last fatal shark attack in Hawaii was in 2015, when a snorkeler off Maui was killed.

"Maui has for some reason been a hot spot in the Hawaiian islands for tiger shark attacks, and I don't think anybody can really say with any certainly why that is. There's certainly great tiger shark habitat on Maui, a lot of shallow water, but a lot of people in the water too," Domeier​​​​​​​ explained.

Although the type of shark involved in the incident was not confirmed by the officials, Domeier said his guess was that Smiley was attacked by a tiger shark.