Shark rescue: Like pulling teeth
Bob Lemons has seen a few shark attack victims in the oceanside Florida town of Boca Raton, but he says Sunday’s incident was a first for him.
Paramedics rushed a beachgoer to the hospital with a 2foot-long nurse shark clinging to her arm after efforts to disengage it failed. Lemons, spokesman for the Boca Raton Fire Rescue, said the 23-yearold woman was already out of the water when rescuers reached the beach.
“She was sitting calmly, seemed to handle it pretty well,” Lemons told USA TODAY on Monday. But rescuers could not get the shark to release — even though it had died. So they loaded woman and shark into the ambulance and headed for Boca Raton Regional Hospital.
“This was a unique situation for us,” Lemons said. “I haven’t heard of something like that before, and I’ve been here almost 30 years.”
The woman was treated for her injuries and released.
Shlomo Jacob, who was on the beach when the woman came out of the water, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel the shark “wouldn’t give up.”
“It was barely breathing but it wasn’t letting go of her arm, like it was stuck to her,” he said.
Nurse sharks, common off of Florida’s coast, are about 1 foot in length at birth and generally grow to about 7 feet long. The maximum length recorded is about 13 feet, according to the National Park Service.
The Park Service says people swim near nurse sharks every day without realizing it and without incident.
“The bite reflex is such that it may be some minutes before a quietly re-immersed nurse shark will relax and release its tormenter,” the Park Service says.
Lemon said shark attacks are not uncommon in the warm ocean waters off Boca Raton. Serious injuries are rare, however. “Sharks are something you always live with when you live near the ocean,” he said.