A shark attack off Florida’s Atlantic coast left a man with a “severe bite to his right arm” on Friday, authorities say, leaving him in critical condition from blood loss.
The Nassau county sheriff’s office marine unit, which was patrolling off the coast of Fernandina beach near the Florida-Georgia border, said it had received a distress call from a boat on Friday and had applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.
“The deputy then piloted the boat to the Dee Dee Bartels boat ramp, where Fernandina Beach Fire Rescue was waiting,” the sheriff’s office said in a social media post. The unnamed man is expected to recover, authorities said.
Earlier this month, three people – a woman and two teenage girls – were hurt in attacks on Florida’s Gulf coast. Authorities have warned swimmers that bait fish moving close to shore at this time of year might be a contributing factor in the attacks.
Florida has a flag system to warn swimmers – purple for the presence of dangerous marine life and red to indicate “high hazard conditions”.
Authorities are also making greater efforts to educate the public. Florida’s fish and wildlife conservation commission says there are no guaranteed ways to avoid shark bites, but understanding shark behavior can help beachgoers make better decisions on when and where to swim.
“It’s very important for people who visit Florida waters to be aware of their surroundings, understand the relative risks, and be educated on various shark issues such as behavior, biology and fisheries,” says the commission’s Brent Winner on the agency’s website.
The commission also says that “shark bites still remain very rare” and people are 30 times more likely to be struck by lightning in Florida than to be bitten by a shark.
An increase in shark bites is attributed more to an increase in the number of people in the water than to a greater number of sharks; shark populations are estimated to be down 25%-30% of what they were three decades ago,
“Humans are much more of a danger to sharks than vice versa,” the commission’s advisory says, placing the relative number of humans killed annually by sharks to the number of sharks killed by humans at 10 to 100m.
“To ensure our own safety and the continued existence of these fascinating fishes, people need to become more aware of sharks and more educated about sharks and related issues,” it noted.
Still, Florida heads global charts for the number of shark bites, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s annual shark attack report. Florida had 16 unprovoked shark bite incidents reported last year, or 44% of the US total and 23% worldwide, but no reported fatalities.
