Surfer Steven Payne presumed dead in shark attack while on Australian vacation with girlfriend and dog: ‘It’s just horrible’

An Australian surfer is presumed dead after a shark attack while his girlfriend and others watched on in horror, only weeks into the couple’s six-month-long dream vacation.

Steven Payne, 37, was surfing the waters off of Wharton Beach — a remote area of Western Australia about 480 miles from Perth — when the shark mauled him on Monday afternoon, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported.

Authorities set out to rescue Payne after receiving reports of the horrific attack but only found his surfboard floating in the water with evidence of bite marks.

However, rescue personnel were unable to locate his body and the search turned into a “recovery not a rescue,” Senior Sergeant Chris Taylor said in a statement on Facebook Tuesday.

Payne’s body has yet to be recovered as of Wednesday morning.

Taylor told ABC that a drone captured footage of the water just after the incident, which “makes it so obvious what happened.”

“There was a lot of blood, the shark, and some other things that I don’t think any others need to see,” he said.

Payne’s girlfriend, dog, and other beach-goers witnessed the attack — which lasted minutes — and spotted him in “distress” before being pulled under the water.

“I’m led to believe they were four to five weeks into that holiday, which obviously has come to an abrupt end. It is heartbreaking,” Taylor said.

“She’s distraught, her life was turned upside down yesterday. You can imagine how she is. It’s just horrible.”

A witness said the predator attacked Payne in roughly chest-deep water.

“We heard the scream, and everyone got out of the water … there was only a surfboard left, floating around about [98 feet] from the shore,” Joscelin Boissieux told 9News.

“The water next to it was dark, with a shark’s fin circling around.”

A school friend of Payne’s said he was a “really good lad” and loved surfing, 7NEWS.com.au reported.

“He was an incredible person who was always there for his mates,” the friend told the outlet.

Wharton Beach is expected to be reopened on Wednesday, police said.

Authorities have reported no further shark sightings in the area.

“We’ve got absolutely fantastic beaches, and we get a lot of people down here who visit them. It is really sad that something like this has happened on that particular beach,” Esperance Shire President Ron Chambers told the ABC.

“They’re a wild animal out in the ocean. People need to be vigilant and manage that risk as much as possible.”

Wharton is a town in the Shire of Esperance in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia.

There have been three fatal shark attacks in the region since 2017, ABC reported.

The fatal shark attack comes days after a woman was left fighting for her life after a shark bit her in the leg in the waters of an isolated beach on the south coast of Sydney.

The 59-year-old woman had been pulled from the water by two men and rushed to the Hospital.

There have been multiple shark attacks in Australia over the past months, according to News.au.

Charlize Zmuda, 17, was killed when she was bitten at Bribie Island’s Woorim Beach, suffering fatal injuries to her upper body on Feb. 3.

Surfer Lance Appleby, 28, went missing after a shark on the Eyre Peninsula attacked him in January.

Youth pastor Luke Walford died after being attacked in Queensland’s Keppel Bay Islands National Park in December.