Shark ambushed a snorkeler — and pregnant wife jumped to the rescue, witnesses say
A shark attacked a snorkeler Sunday in the Florida Keys, and the man’s pregnant wife jumped off a boat to pull her husband to safety, witnesses said.
Several other people were already in the water on Sombrero Reef, a popular snorkeling spot that surrounds a lighthouse in the Middle Keys, before Andrew Eddy donned his goggles and flippers and slid off the back of the boat around 10:30 a.m.
But, as soon as he hit the water, a large shark, which witnesses say was likely a bull shark, slammed into him and latched onto his shoulder.
Disregarding her own safety, his wife, Margot Dukes-Eddy, immediately leaped off the boat to Andrew’s aid.
“Dukes saw the shark’s dorsal fin and then blood filling the water. Dukes, without hesitation, dove into the water and pulled Eddy to the safety of the boat,” Deputy Christopher Aguanno wrote in his report.
Eddy, 30, was driven by boat to Sombrero Beach in Marathon where medics with the city’s Fire Rescue were waiting. Monroe County’s helicopter air ambulance flew him to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.
Eddy’s condition Tuesday was not available. Dukes-Eddy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Jackson spokeswoman said this week the family requested privacy.
According to the sheriff’s office report, Eddy was on the 20-foot open motorboat that day with Dukes-Eddy, her parents, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. Her father, sister and sister’s boyfriend went into the water before Eddy jumped in, the report stated.
There were also several snorkelers in the water that arrived on different boats, none of whom were fishing or chumming the waters, Aguanno said.
The other boaters in the area told deputies that they had seen an “8 or 9 foot bull shark” that day.
Sharks, including bulls, are common in the Florida Keys, but unlike other areas of the state, shark bites are rare, although they do happen.
According to the latest information from the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File, Monroe County has had 17 unprovoked shark bites since 1882. Meanwhile, Volusia County in northern Florida has had 312, earning the area the designation of “the shark bite capital of the world.”
“It’s relatively uncommon,” George Burgess, now retired director of the International Shark Attack File, said Tuesday about shark attacks in the Keys.
He said that’s because of the different types of recreational water activities in the two areas. The Keys lack the waves and rough surf that makes Volusia popular with swimmers and surfers.
Those two groups are at risk of bumping into a shark, typically smaller black tips, that end up confused and take a bite mistaking a foot or a leg for a fish.
“You have different types of activity, different types of sharks and different types of density,” Burgess said.
In contrast, people in the Keys typically spend their time in the water snorkeling, scuba diving and hanging around sandbars — activities where you’re less likely to have an accidental encounter with a shark.
That said, it does happen, and sometimes in places where people feel safe to swim.
On Sept. 26, 2009, a man who had just sold his house on Key Colony Beach, a small incorporated town in the Middle Keys, jumped into the 120-foot wide canal in back of the home for one last swim.
Within seconds, he was bitten on the right foot by a bull shark estimated to be about 8 feet long. He said the shark began pulling him farther down in the water and let go only after he kicked it with his free foot.
In the chaos, he climbed a barnacle-encrusted ladder attached to the sea wall to get away from the shark, which cut up his left foot.
The man, Daniel Callahan, survived the ordeal after needing 130 stitches in the foot the shark bit.
Burgess agrees with witnesses of Sunday’s incident that the shark that bit Eddy was likely a bull, and not a tiger shark, as some have speculated.
Both species are common in the Keys and are among the top three, along with white sharks, for the most unprovoked bites on humans.
“Bulls are regular inhabitants at that attack site, tigers less so, but still common,” Burgess said.
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 7:12 PM.
