For days, divers scanned the waters off Lovers Point hoping to find a trace of Erica Fox, the missing open-water swimmer believed to have been killed by a shark on Dec. 21.
The intensive search involving multiple agencies came to an end last weekend when rescue teams recovered Fox’s body six days after she vanished from Monterey Bay, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Monday night. Fox was identified based on personal items recovered with her remains, including a shark-deterrent band worn on her ankle.
“Erica was doing what she loved — connected to the ocean, alive in her element. That matters. She didn’t lose her life in fear, but in passion,” Juan Heredia, a rescue diver who searched tirelessly for Fox, wrote in a statement.
A well-known figure in the local open-water swimming community, Fox was a co-founder of the Kelp Krawlers, a Pacific Grove-based group that swims year-round in Monterey Bay.
A friend and fellow swimmer, Sara Rubin, was among a group of 15 swimmers present when Fox disappeared. Rubin later wrote about the incident in local news outlet Monterey County Now.
“A harbor seal swam under me for close to a minute as I approached the beach, one of those wildlife-human interactions that we cherish,” Rubin wrote. “Like the other swimmers, I was unaware that a tragedy was happening, with only the sounds of my own strokes splashing.”
While the group was in the water, two witnesses reported the incident from shore around noon, telling Pacific Grove police that a swimmer may have encountered a shark, department officials said. When Rubin and the others returned to the beach, they realized Fox was not accounted for.
Police and fire crews from Pacific Grove and Monterey quickly launched a search-and-rescue operation, supported by the U.S. Coast Guard, the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, California State Parks and multiple aircraft and vessels, authorities said. Beaches in Pacific Grove and Monterey closed for days as a precaution.
Despite more than 15 hours of searching across roughly 84 square nautical miles, crews were unable to locate Fox, and the active search was suspended later that day, according to police.
Divers including Heredia and Fox’s husband, Jean-François Vanreusel, continued scouring the rocky coastline until Fox’s remains werefound by law enforcement on Dec. 27 several miles north of Lovers Point. Cal Fire crews used a rope system to retrieve the body of the swimmer, clad in a black-and-blue wetsuit, from a remote stretch of beach south of Davenport, according to officials.
“Today, at approximately 2:00 p.m., a body was recovered from the ocean south of Davenport Beach,” the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “Due to the close proximity to the recent shark attack victim in Monterey County, our agency is working closely with the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office and the Pacific Grove Police Department regarding the recovery.”
Sheriff’s officials did not identify the body as Fox until Monday night. Officials said a coroner’s report would be released once available.
The encounter was the second shark-related incident at Lovers Point in three years. In 2022, 62-year-old Steve Bruemmer was rescued by passersby after a shark bit him across his thighs and abdomen. Bruemmer belonged to the same swimming club.
Incidents of sharks attacking humans remain rare in California. According to data from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, there have been about 230 documented shark incidents statewide since 1950, with just 17 fatalities. Experts say the rise in reported encounters largely reflects increased ocean use and improved reporting, not a surge in aggressive shark behavior.
At a Sunday morning memorial, club members and friends walked together along the bluffs at Lovers Point, tracing the route of Fox’s final mile in the water, the Mercury News reported.
In her column, Rubin remembered Fox as a “bright light of a person” and a passionate triathlete and writer.
“She developed a deeply intimate relationship with the Pacific Ocean not by studying it or by looking at it, but by getting into it — again and again and again, on choppy days and gloriously calm days, logging what I can only guess are thousands of miles.”
