Shark Attacks Two Teenagers

A trip to the beach turned dreadful for two young people on Sunday when each was attacked by a shark while wading in waist-deep water off the coast of Oak Island, North Carolina.

The 12-year-old girl and 16-year-old-boy survived their separate attacks, which occurred 2 miles apart and within 90 minutes of one another. These incidents follow on the heels of another shark attack that took place last Thursday (June 11) at Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, a barrier island about 15 miles west of Oak Island.

Experts in marine science say the closeness of the two attacks was quite unusual. A professor of marine science at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina Dan Abel said, there haven't been so many severe attacks, so close together, in decades.

However, the young people who were attacked on Sunday weren't just bitten and then released. In fact, each victim lost an arm to what Abel believes was a single bull shark. It's questionable that a low-likelihood event such as a shark attack would occur twice in such a short time frame and involve two different sharks, Abel said.

Bull sharks hunt in shallow waters all along the U.S. East Coast, and this is one of the shark species most often involved in fatal attacks against humans. Along with sand tiger sharks, tiger sharks, hammerheads and many other species of shark, bull sharks spend much of their time hunting for food close to the eastern coastline.

"The Atlantic coast in the summer is a fairly 'sharky' place," Abel said. "There are dangerous sharks in areas where there are rarely any attacks against humans. And there are areas where there may be fewer sharks but there are attacks."

When trying to figure out why a shark would attack several people off the coast of North Carolina while other swimmers a bit further north or south remained safe is, as Abel put it, "not good science." But there are factors that can contribute to the likelihood of a shark attack in a particular area, he said.

He said researchers are currently working on humane solutions for keeping sharks and swimmers apart from one another.

Source: livescience.com