Shark bites a man at Florida Keys sandbar popular with weekend crowds
A man was bitten on the leg by a shark while he was hanging out on a Florida Keys sandbar popular with weekend partiers, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed.
The incident happened on April 17, Easter Sunday, but the Coast Guard did not confirm the bite until this week.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Ryan Estrada, a Coast Guard spokesman, said the 56-year-old man, who the agency has not named, flagged down a patrol boat from Coast Guard Station Islamorada around 4 p.m. after being bitten.
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The man was at the sand bar off Whale Harbor near Windley Key, Estrada said.
He suffered an eight-inch laceration on his lower leg from a “shark bite,” Estrada said.
The Coast Guard crew took the man to the marina at the Post Card Inn hotel on Windley Key, where medics were waiting, Estrada said. It was not immediately clear how serious the man’s injuries were, nor the type of shark that bit him.
Shark bite odds
According to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File, which tracks annual shark bites worldwide, most bites happen in the United States, and Florida is the state where most of the unpleasant encounters occur.
That said, unprovoked attacks are still extremely rare in Florida or anywhere else, and the sharks most responsible for biting people in the Sunshine State are typically smaller species that seldom inflict life-threatening injuries.
The last person killed by a shark in Florida was Stephen Howard Schafer, 38, when he was kite surfing off a beach in Martin County Feb. 3, 2010, according to Shark Attack Data. Investigators say a bull shark was most likely responsible for that attack.
In 2021, there were 47 shark bites in the U.S., and one — in California — was fatal.
Florida had 28 shark bites last year, none fatal. Volusia County topped the list with 17 shark bites, followed by Brevard, Miami-Dade and St. Lucie counties — all with two bites each, according to the ISAF.
Broward, Martin, Manatee, Palm Beach and St. Johns counties all had one shark bite each occur in 2021, the ISAF said.
More than half of those bitten in Florida last year were surfing or participating in a similar board sport.
“This group spends a large amount of time in the surf zone, and area commonly frequented by sharks, and may unintentionally attract sharks by splashing, paddling and ‘wiping out,’” the ISAF said in its 2021 report.
Miami Herald/FLKeysnews.com staff writer Gwen Filosa contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 26, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
