In a shark attack that occurred early Monday evening, a 50-year-old woman was seriously injured while swimming at the city beach called Rockaway in the Queens borough of the US capital. The predator inflicted severe injuries on her left thigh, according to rescuers, and the woman was taken to hospital in a “critical but stable condition.”
As a precaution, the bathing area has been closed until Tuesday, and authorities are scanning the sea from the air for sharks. In recent decades, shark sightings have become more frequent in the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of New York and Long Island, in part because of improved water quality, but shark attacks remain rare.
Shark experts say shark bites are ‘extremely rare’ Worldwide, they occur in 70-80 cases annually without triggering marine predators. According to the International Shark Attack Database (ISAF), Rockaway Beach was bitten by a shark more than 60 years ago, and city officials don’t recall another incident since then.
The famous Rockaway Beach is visited by 100,000 people a day. In the past two summers, it has been closed to visitors several times because sharks have been sighted nearby. Further east, along the coast of Long Island, 13 shark bites have been reported to authorities in the past two beach seasons, but none were serious. Dozens of shark bites are known in New York history before 2022.
Sharks are appearing more and more near the coast of New York due to the increase in the numbers of prey fish in the area as a result of environmental measures.
Cover photo credit: Vincent Pomerol via Getty Images
