A teenage boy was bitten by a shark while participating in a lifeguard training camp in Florida.
The 14-year-old dove into the water just north of the New Smyrna Beach Jetty in Ponce Inlet when he landed on a four to five-foot-long blacktip shark, according to Volusia County Beach Safety.
Immediately, the shark bit the boy on his calf.
The teen who was attending Junior Lifeguard Camp on Monday morning was treated on the beach and transported to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, officials told WKMG.
He was attacked just a few days after other people were bitten by sharks close by in New Smyrna Beach.
On Friday afternoon, a 26-year-old Sarasota man floating on an innertube five feet in the water around the 4300 block of South Atlantic Avenue was chomped on the left foot by a shark, said Volusia County Beach Safety. He was treated at the scene and taken to a hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.
And the day prior, a 21-year-old Ohio man playing football knee-deep in the water near Flagler Avenue was bitten by a shark, according to officials. He was also taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
That same day, the Fourth of July, a woman had much less luck a shark encounter than the 14-year-old boy. Tabatha Sullivent kicked what she thought was a ‘huge fish’ off South Padre Island in Texas and had her calf torn off by the animal, which turned out to be a shark.
‘My leg is pretty much gone,’ she told FOX Dallas-Fort Worth around a day after being bitten.
‘They flushed it out today. It’s all the way to the bone. It did not go through the bone.’
Shark attacks are reported every summer in the US and around the world, but are rare in a global context.
Last year, there were 69 confirmed shark attacks worldwide, up from the latest five-year average of 63 attacks, according to the International Shark Attack File. Nearly half of the attacks in the US happened in Florida, with Volusia County – where the 14-year-old boy was bitten – having already been nicknamed the ‘shark bite capital of the world’.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
