A shark bit a 21-year-old tourist playing football off a Florida beach, officials said.
The beachgoer was visiting from Ohio when he was “bitten on his right foot while playing football in knee-deep water near Flagler Avenue in New Smyrna Beach,” Tamra Malphurs, interim director of Volusia County Beach Safety Ocean Rescue, told McClatchy News in an email.
The incident was reported at about 4 p.m. on the Fourth of July. The man was taken to a hospital to be treated for non-life-threatening injuries, officials said.
New Smyrna Beach, a roughly 15-mile drive south from Daytona Beach, is sometimes called the “shark bite capital of the world” due to incidents off its coast, according to The Daytona Beach News-Journal.
Last year, Florida had 16 unprovoked shark bites, the most of any state. Within the Sunshine State, “Volusia County had the most shark bites (8),” according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File.
Shark attacks
Shark attacks are “extremely rare,” according to John Carlson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“You have a better chance of getting in a car accident and being injured on your way to the beach than you do actually when you get to go swimming,” he said in a video posted to NOAA’s website.
In 2023, the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File investigated 120 shark-human interactions worldwide. Of those interactions, 69 were unprovoked shark bites, and there were 14 “shark-related fatalities.”
If you see a shark in the water, however, don’t panic, Richard Peirce, former chair of the Shark Trust and Shark Conservation Society, told CNN.
“Don’t start splashing around — you’re just going to excite, incite and encourage the shark’s interest,” he told the news outlet.
Instead, maintain eye contact with the shark and read its body language. If the shark appears to be in “attack mode,” you should make yourself as large as possible, CNN reported. If it seems to just be swimming by, try to stay small.
If the shark attacks, experts told CNN you shouldn’t play dead.
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