A man is in critical condition after being bitten by a shark while fishing off the coast of Florida. Florida has the most reported shark attacks of any state.
At 11:15 a.m. on Friday, the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office (NCSO) marine unit was searching the waters around Fernandina Beach when it got a radio call for help.
NCSO said the call said a guy had been badly bitten by a shark on the right forearm.
Someone from the NCSO told ABC News that the man, who is in his 40s, was fishing on a boat at the time of the attack. The man was in the boat when the shark grabbed his arm, but it’s still not clear how it did it.
Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said, “He lost a lot of blood.” “It was a pretty bad wound.”
When the deputies got there, they saw that the victim had a serious injury. They jumped on board the boat right away and put a tourniquet on his arm to stop the blood.
After that, the deputy took charge of the boat and sailed it back to a boat ramp, where Fernandina Beach Fire Rescue was waiting.
The victim was taken to a nearby hospital by helicopter right away. He is currently listed in serious condition, but police say he is likely to get better.
“The deputy was a hero when he got there and made sure he took care of things,” Leeper said of the deputy who was not named.
The Independent has asked the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office for more details.
Before this latest attack, there were two different shark attacks in the Gulf Coast of Florida earlier in June that hurt three people.
The first woman, 45 years old, was struck in Walton County and suffered “significant trauma” to her midsection. Part of her left lower arm had to be cut off.
After only an hour and a half, two young girls, ages 15 and 17, were hurt while swimming four miles away near Seacrest Beach in the second attack.
One girl was seriously hurt; she had wounds on both of her lower and upper limbs and had to be rushed to a trauma center for care.
With 928 attacks on Florida’s shoreline since 1837, the state is thought to be the “shark attack capital” of the United States. According to The International Shark Attack File for 2023, the state is also in the running for the “worldwide” title.
The file looked into 120 reported interactions between sharks and people around the world last year and found that 69 of them were not provoked.
The United States had the most interactions, with 36 cases, which is 52% of the total number of interactions that happened around the world.
Sixteen of the 36 random killings that happened in the US last year happened in Florida.
The study found that Volusia County had eight shark bites, which was half of the state’s total. This made it the shark attack capital of the world in 2023 for that reason.
In another part of the US, on June 23, a famous surfer who was in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie was killed by a shark while surfing in Hawaii.
Malaekahana Beach on Oahu, Honolulu, was the scene of the attack. Surfer Tamayo Perry, 49, was found with several shark bites. Guards brought him to land on a jet ski, but he was already dead when they got there.
