A 65-year-old woman was bitten by a shark on Monday evening off New York’s Rockaway Beach and is in critical condition, the latest in a series of shark attacks off the region’s coast.
The attack was reported at about 5.49pm, according to the New York police department.
The woman was bitten on the leg and brought to a hospital in the Jamaica section of Queens to be treated. Officers saved her life by applying a tourniquet on her wound, the New York Daily News reported.
Separately, the New York Post reported that the woman is suspected to have lost “approximately 20lbs of flesh” from a bite above the knee on her left leg that was inflicted when she was swimming alone off the shore.
Her bite prompted lifeguards to clear the water of swimmers as helicopter police searched unsuccessfully for the shark, the New York parks department said in a statement. The beach was closed on Tuesday for swimming and surfing after what was described as the first known shark bite there since 1953.
“We hope for a full recovery for this swimmer,” a police department spokesperson said. “Though this was a frightening event, we want to remind New Yorkers that shark bites in Rockaway are extremely rare.”
But not that rare. Multiple shark “encounters” were reported last month off beaches in or near New York. Over the Fourth of July holiday, five people were bitten, including a 15-year-old boy.
A 47-year-old man was bitten on the knee. Police said in a statement that “the bite was from a larger marine animal”.
A 49-year-old man was also bitten on his right hand by a shark. Later that month, a 16-year-old surfer was bitten on the foot. “I felt something on my foot like a bear trap,” he later said.
The prohibition on swimming was extended on Tuesday to include beaches further east of Rockaway Beach towards Long Island – including several areas of Jones Beach – following possible shark sightings.
New York parks official George Gorman said the bans had gone into effect out of an abundance of caution, and that the shoreline was being monitored by surveillance drones at all times.
Gorman said that after a possible shark sighting, officials monitoring the shoreline spotted a large school of bait and bunker fish. “We’re concerned that sharks might feed off the smaller baitfish,” Gorman told Newsday.
Shark bite tallies for this summer – at six so far – are trailing 2022, when a record eight shark were reported. Eleven years ago, in 2012, there was just one.
Human-shark interactions are typically attributed to sand-tiger sharks, a species that can grow to 10ft long which have been seen in healthy numbers along the surf line off Long Island.
Marine biologists say the sharks are not looking to bite humans nor are their teeth well-suited for that task. Instead, they are after large schools of Atlantic menhaden, or bunker fish, that they drive toward shallow waters near the beach.
Gavin Naylor, a shark researcher at the University of Florida, told Vox recently that humans can unintentionally mimic the signal emitted by schools of menhaden, which are now found in large numbers since commercial fishing of the bait species was restricted.
Still, with more humans, more bait and more sharks in the waters of New York, the state has recorded eight of its 20 shark attacks since 1837 in the past year.
“There’s also a dozen other species, including sand tiger sharks, sandbar sharks and dusky sharks, that share the habitat,” Tobey Curtis, a fishery management and migratory species specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Guardian last year.
“If there’s more sharks and more people in the same place at the same time there’s more chance of an interaction.”
The beach is subject to a delayed opening on Tuesday, with a start time of 11am at the earliest, as authorities will continue to monitor the area for sharks, the parks department said.
This article was amended on 9 August 2023 to clarify that the victim is 65, not 50 as previously stated.
