In response to a recent surge in marine animal bites, authorities have increased shark patrols at Long Island beaches in New York.
Officials in Long Island’s eastern Suffolk County, where three of the attacks occurred, have increased beach patrols and are using drones to scour the water for potential threats, CNN quoted the Suffolk County Police Department as saying in a statement.
A school of approximately 50 sharks was spotted by a drone near Robert Moses Beach on Tuesday morning, the same day a 15-year-old girl was bitten while swimming at the same beach, according to George Gorman, the Long Island Regional Director for New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.
Though no sharks were seen by the girl or anyone nearby at the time of the incident, the bite was most likely from a shark, Gorman said on Wednesday.
Also Tuesday, a 15-year-old boy was bitten on his foot by a shark while surfing off Fire Island’s Kismet Beach, Suffolk police said.
Three more people were bitten on Tuesday, including a 47-year-old man swimming in waters off of Long Island’s Quogue Village Beach, local police said. The bite left him with lacerations on his knee and was from a “larger marine animal” preliminarily believed to be a shark, CNN quoted the Quogue Village Police Department as saying.
The two others who were bitten — a 49-year-old man at Pines Beach and a woman west of Cherry Grove — both sustained non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
The police department has encouraged people to continue to enjoy the beach but urged swimmers to be vigilant and look out for sharks or pods of fish that may attract predators.
In 2022, the Florida Museum of Natural History documented 57 confirmed, unprovoked attacks worldwide. Of those, 41 were in the US, with eight non-fatal incidents in New York.
