Janine Lochrenberg was an experienced ocean swimmer.
She was also wearing a shark-repellent band when a shark fatally attacked her off South Africa. That detail is raising painful questions about the devices marketed to protect people in the water.
The 65-year-old retired medical physicist was swimming with her open-water group Tuesday morning, October 20, off Orient Beach in KuGompo, formerly East London. Witnesses said she screamed after suffering severe bites to her thigh and upper arm. Fellow swimmers dragged her toward shore and tried CPR, but she could not be revived.
“We were all in the water, swimming. We were wearing [magnetic shark repellents] on our feet. She had one on,” fellow swimmer Mike Loewe told News24, as quoted by PEOPLE.
Lochrenberg’s sister, Margot, helped hold her head during the desperate rescue. “She had a deep affinity with the water and was a remarkable person,” Margot told the BBC.
Her swimming club offered a heartbreaking tribute: “The ocean was Janine’s happy place.”
Municipal officials closed Orient and Eastern beaches while police opened an inquest. The city’s previous recorded fatal shark attack was in 1997. The species involved in this latest incident has not been officially established.
The protective band is particularly troubling because it echoes the death of Erica Fox, 55, who was killed by a shark while swimming at Lovers Point in California’s Monterey Bay in December 2025. Fox was also wearing a shark-deterrent anklet.
Related: Great White Shark Photobombs Woman in Peak ‘Sharktober’ Off California (Video)
These magnetic bands are intended to interfere with sharks’ electroreception. But their effectiveness is disputed. A peer-reviewed study testing five deterrents found that Sharkbanz magnetic bracelets and leashes did not measurably deter white sharks.
Meanwhile, shark conservationist Ocean Ramsey previously endorsed RPELA, an electrically powered surfboard deterrent, saying: “I’ve seen that it actually works.” RPELA and passive magnetic bands are different products, and neither guarantees protection.
As a side note, Ramsey is also facing unrelated, unproven workplace-abuse allegations involving One Ocean Diving.
For Lochrenberg’s loved ones, however, the science is inseparable from a devastating loss.
Two deaths involving deterrent-wearing swimmers underscore an uncomfortable truth: no wearable device makes the ocean shark-proof.
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