A man has been left in critical condition after he was bitten by a shark while fishing off the coast of Florida – the state with the highest number of recorded shark attacks.
The Nassau County Sheriff’s Office (NCSO) marine unit was out patrolling the waters around Fernandina Beach when it received an emergency radio distress call at 11.15am on Friday.
The call reported a man had suffered a severe shark bite to his right forearm, NCSO said.
The man, who is in his 40s, was on board a boat and fishing at the time of the attack, an NCSO spokesperson told ABC News. It remains unclear how the shark managed to get hold of the man’s arm while he was in the vessel.
“He lost a lot of blood,” Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said. “He was bleeding pretty bad.”
When deputies arrived, they found the victim with a critical injury, prompting them to immediately board the vessel and apply a tourniquet to stop the bleeding from his arm.
The deputy then took control of the vessel and sailed it back to a boat ramp, where Fernandina Beach Fire Rescue was waiting.
The victim was immediately airlifted to a nearby hospital and has been listed in critical condition; however, police say he is expected to recover.
“The deputy was a hero when he arrived and made sure he took care of the situation,” Leeper said of the unnamed deputy.
The Independent has contacted the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office for further information.
This latest incident comes off the back of two separate shark attacks in the Gulf Coast of Florida earlier in June that left three people injured.
In the first incident, a 45-year-old woman was left with “significant trauma” to her midsection and had part of her left lower arm amputated after being attacked in Walton County.
In the second attack, only an hour and a half later, two teenage girls aged 15 and 17, were injured four miles away near Seacrest Beach while swimming.
One girl had serious injuries, with wounds to one upper and one lower extremity, and was rushed to a trauma center for treatment.
Florida is considered the shark attack capital of the United States, having a total of 928 attacks on its coastline since 1837; the state is also a contender for the worldwide spot, according to The International Shark Attack File for 2023.
The file investigated 120 alleged shark-human interactions worldwide last year and found that 69 of those were unprovoked.
The United States came out on top as the country where most interactions happened, with 36 cases representing 52 per cent of the worldwide total.
Florida was home to 16 of the 36 unprovoked attacks in the US last year.
Volusia County had the most shark bites in Florida with eight, representing 50 per cent of the state’s total, making it 2023’s shark attack capital of the world, according to the research.
Elsewhere in the United States, a well-known surfer who appeared in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie died after he was attacked by a shark while surfing in Hawaii on June 23.
Surfer Tamayo Perry, 49, was found with several shark bites after the attack at Malaekahana Beach on Oahu, Honolulu. He was brought to shore by lifeguards on a jet ski before being pronounced dead at the scene.
