The man was surfing at Long Reef in the area called Northern Beaches, about a mile north of central Sydney, on Saturday morning. His body was found with severe bites on the lower body.
The incident led to the closure of several beaches in the Northern Beaches area, according to the New South Wales lifeguard organization. Drones are patrolling the shoreline to assess the risk of further attacks.
The shark is described as large, but what species it is was not immediately clear.
Deadly shark attacks are very rare in Sydney. In 2022, a man was killed at the small beach Little Bay. But before that, the last case was in 1963.
In Australia as a whole, on average about one person is killed by sharks per year.
