Shark bite blamed for N.Y. swimmer’s foot injury

A man swimming Thursday at Jones Beach on Long Island in New York may have been bitten by a shark, according to the Nassau County Police Department.

The 57-year-old man was swimming in the ocean in the early afternoon when he “sustained a laceration to his right foot,” Nassau police said Friday.

Medics who treated the man’s injury identified it as a possible shark bite. Nassau County officials said they would increase patrols at all county beaches through Fourth of July weekend.

Last year, after several shark sightings along Jones Beach and Lido Beach, officials briefly closed several beaches and began boat patrols along the shoreline.

Attacks are exceedingly rare in the area, and many experts say patrols do little more than fuel unwarranted fear of sharks. Scientists say the reason it may seem like more sharks are being spotted is because more people are looking for them.

Hans Walters, a field scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium, said there is no real evidence that local shark populations have increased in recent years. He called the threat that sharks pose to people on New York beaches “very overblown.”

At a news conference Friday morning at Nickerson Beach, west of Jones Beach, the Nassau County executive, Bruce Blakeman, was vague on details of the report about the potential attack.

“I believe it was on his leg,” he told reporters, adding that “there was no explanation as to how he got his injuries.”

The surgeons who treated the man “thought it looked like a fish bite, probably a shark bite,” Blakeman said.

As to whether the injury was caused by a shark, he said, “It’s not 100%, but it was a level of concern.”

With a police boat monitoring the ocean behind him, Blakeman announced that the county police would be increasing patrols this summer, both by boat and by helicopter, with hourly runs along the shoreline.

The county would also conduct monitoring by drone over ocean swimmers, he said, “to make sure we have a good picture of what’s going on.”

“We want to stress to everybody that it’s safe to go in the ocean,” he said, adding that bathers should always swim with friends and with a lifeguard present.

A spokesperson for the State Parks Department, which runs Jones Beach, referred calls to the county police, and a hospital spokesperson said no information was available on the patient.

FLORIDA ATTACK

Addison Bethea, 17, was seriously injured when a shark attacked her off Florida’s Gulf Coast, authorities said.

The attack occurred Thursday afternoon off Keaton Beach, according to a Taylor County sheriff’s office news release.

Bethea had been looking for scallops in the water with her family when a 9-foot shark wrapped its jaws around the girl’s thigh, according to statement from her family.

The girl poked the shark in the eyes and punched it before her brother, who is a firefighter, managed to fight the shark off and pull the girl onto a stranger’s boat. The brother put a tourniquet on the girl’s leg to slow blood loss. After she was taken to shore, the girl was airlifted about 60 miles to a hospital in Tallahassee, the state capital, officials said.

Although Bethea survived the attack, she suffered “devastating damage to the soft tissue in her right leg,” according to a statement from Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, where she is being treated. After going through an emergency surgery to restore blood flow to the leg, the hospital said in a statement that Bethea was scheduled for another procedure Saturday afternoon “to further investigate the extent of the damage to her leg and determine what treatment options are available with the goal of saving her leg.”

Officials didn’t immediately know what kind of shark bit the girl.