Two shark attacks were reported over the course of one day on beaches off of Long Island.
Swimming was suspended at a popular beach on New York’s Long Island after a surfer was bitten early on Wednesday morning, NBC New York reports.
“Swimming has been suspended at this time due to dangerous marine life activity,” Suffolk County Parks said in a statement on Twitter.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone told Newsday the surfer has been taken to Long Island Community Hospital in Patchogue for treatment.
The bite occured between 7am and 8am on Smith Point beach, marking the second time in recent weeks an oceangoer has been bitten by a shark in Suffolk County.
The Independent has contacted Suffolk County police for more information.
Later on Wednesday, a second shark attack occurred at Seaview Beach, also off of Long Island. Neither attack was life-threatening.
Mr Bellone’s office added that shark bites are “extremely rare” in the area and Long Island lifeguards patrol the water with paddleboards, Jet Skis, and drones to ensure the safety of swimmers.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Bellone said the 41-year-old surfer, who swam back to the beach himself, suffered a four-inch cut on his leg.
“It’s just something you’ve got to be expecting when you’re in the water,” a bystander told CBS New York. “I saw him this morning when he was by the booth getting medical treatment. It looked like just a small bite on his leg, a couple inches, but it happens, it’s nothing that makes me that nervous. I’m going to keep coming to the beach and going in the water anyway.”
Earlier this month, a small shark non-fatally bit a lifeguard’s chest and hand during a training exercise, leading to another temporary beach shutdown.
The bite marked the first reported shark encounter at Smith Point beach since it opened in 1959.
On 7 July, a 17-year-old lifeguard in training was on Fire Island’s Ocean Beach, sustaining injuries to his feet.
Shark bites are extremely rare, and fatal ones rarer still. Sharks do not consider humans a primary food source and often seek to avoid contact with humans. Driving to the beach is by far and away more dangerous than swimming at it.
Roughly one shark bite has been reported every 10 years in Long Island over the last century.
Cleaner seas, rebounding fish species, and warming oceans because of climate change in the New York area may be causing more shark sightings, according to experts.
There’s also the factor of social media and the internet bringing more visibility than ever before to encounters between humans and sharks that have always occured in the ocean.
“We are more in tune to sharks than ever before, and I think that’s a bigger issue than an actual increase in incidents or an actual increase in the number of sharks,” Hans Walters of the New York Aquarium told ABC7.
In June, a swimmer in Pacfic Grove, California, was bitten by a shark, suffering severe injuries.
A group of paddleboarders and surfers saw the swimmer in distress and paddled him back to safety.
