On Monday, two people were attacked by sharks at a South Carolina beach within hours of one another, with one grandma suffering a “severe bite” to her arm.
On August 15, while visiting Myrtle Beach with her family, Pittsburgher Karren Sites was attacked by a shark.
With her eight-year-old grandson Brian, who was taking his first full day of vacation, she was standing in water that was up to her waist.
‘I simply felt something bite me, I assume, and a shark was on my arm. I was just submerged to my waist. Sites told WPDE, “I kept pressing at it to get it off my arm, and it did.
Despite being only a few steps away, the astonished grandson said he did not see the shark approach.
The child said, “I couldn’t even see the shark coming up; all I saw was the shark jump up and it didn’t even bite all the way; like I saw the movement of the tail go to the side and then she screamed a little bit and as soon as she touched it, it dropped into the sea.”
When she touched it, it immediately dropped into the water.
Hundreds of stitches were used to patch the severe wound after Sites was transported to a nearby hospital.
Based on the appearance of the wound, Coastal Carolina University’s Daniel Abel, a professor of marine science, concluded that it was caused by a shark bite.
When you consider the arc of the tooth marks and the extent of the damage, “It’s quite plainly a shark bite.”
He continued, “My apologies to the sufferer, that’s a horrible thing to go through.”
There was a second attack that day, according to Master Corporal Kevin Larke of the Myrtle Beach Police Department, though no information was immediately available.
He claimed that during the ordeals on Monday, one of the two victims had received a “terrible bite” on the forearm.
Abel advised swimmers to be caution at this time of year as sharks approach the coast in search of food.
He advised against swimming at dawn and twilight because fewer people were in the water and some sharks were nearby and actively feeding.
“Avoid swimming near offshore schools of tiny fish.” Avoid swimming close to piers where people are fishing.
On June 21, a shark attacked a private family camper close to Myrtle Beach.
With a developing trend, there have already been four shark attacks in South Carolina over the course of the past year. In 2021, there was just one shark attack that was noted.
Only 116 shark attacks had occurred in the state since 1900, or less than one per year, up until Monday.
There has been 61 shark bite attacks worldwide as of yesterday, with 10 of them being provoked and six resulting in fatalities.
According to Tracking Sharks, there have been 34 attacks in the United States (Hawaii 0, Florida 19, California 1, New York 6, South Carolina 5), 10 in Australia (1 fatal), and 1 in the United Kingdom (provoked).
An unprovoked shark attack is quite unlikely given the huge number of people that swim and surf along the coasts, even in shark hotspots.
The International Shark Attack Files at the Florida Museum of Natural History claim that in the US, bicycle accidents claim more lives than shark attacks.
If the same shark was responsible for both bites on Monday, it remains unknown.
Great whites, bull sharks, sand tigers, tiger sharks, blacktip sharks, lemon sharks, and hammerheads are some of the shark species that can be found in the seas around Myrtle Beach.
Although a great white shark was extremely unlikely to have been the culprit, there have been more and more reports of them in the vicinity.
According to Nature World News, Breton, a 13-foot great white shark with the OCEARCH tag, was tagged on August 2 about 60 miles off the coast of Myrtle Beach.
Due to their seasonal migration habits, which include swimming from Canada or New England to Florida in the summer and back down to Florida in the winter, great white sharks frequently pass by South Carolina at this time of year.
A ten-year-old child who was attacked by an 8-foot bull shark while swimming off the Florida Keys last week had to have his leg amputated below the knee to save his life.
Along with his mother, father, two brothers, and sister, Jameson Reeder Jr. was attacked by a shark on Saturday afternoon at 4pm while watching the Looe Key reef, which is located about five miles offshore, according to his uncle.
My nephew Jameson Jr. was attacked by what they estimate to be an 8-foot bull shark on his leg and sustained a crushing blow below his knee when a very horrific event occurred while they were out on a boat snorkelling along a shallow coral, Joshua Reeder wrote on Sunday.
It was not operational due to the damage the shark had done, therefore they had to remove or amputate from just below the knee to preserve his life. Reeder’s tweet continued, “They said the shark made the decision for him and there was nothing they could do to save it.” However, he was not killed. Thank you, Jesus/Yeshua!
Half an hour after the attack, at around 4.30 p.m., Jameson Jr. was carried back aboard the boat his family was riding before relatives flagged down another boat nearby that had a nurse on board.
And earlier this month, a teenager in the Florida Keys was out lobstering when he came face to face with a shark, which bit him on the lip.
13-year-old Fischer Hricko was searching for the crustaceans with his father when he suddenly felt a tap on the back of his leg. He had been pursuing a particularly large specimen.
He was bit in the face by an agile nurse shark.
He suddenly emerged, yelling, “Mom, mom, shark!” Take me away from here! Rhiannon, the mother of Fischer Hricko, said to FOX 35, “Get me out of the water!”
“I spotted a large one and grabbed it.” When I was climbing up with the lobster in my hand, I felt a light tap on the back of my leg. When I turned around, the shark was staring me in the face, according to Fischer.
Drone footage shows that shark encounters with people near Florida are unnervingly frequent.
A shark swam within two feet of completely unknowing swimmers this week, and the drone pilot managed to capture the horrifying near-miss on camera.
While flying the drone with his brother on Thursday, pilot Robert Russ saw the seven-foot shark and started tracking it with interest as it swam close to the Daytona Beach boardwalk.
Then they noticed that the shark started to approach two swimmers who were aimlessly waving at the camera.
The couple is approached by what is thought to be a blacktip shark, but it turns away without the swimmers realising they may have been in danger.
They weren’t the only ones, according to Russ, who told Fox35 that the creature “swam towards many people before deciding they were not food and going on.”
The Florida Museum documents a rise in shark attacks starting in the 1980s. It is believed that cleaner coastal waters, which attract bigger predators due to an increase in fish life, are partially to blame.
Over a third of shark attacks in Florida are committed by “Requiem” sharks, with the more dreadful tiger and great white sharks further down the list.
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