The Shadow
Two swimmers were attacked by sharks offshore at two separate New York’s Long Island beaches on Wed., July 13, increasing the number of shark attacks there to five since June 30.
“Jaws,” the blockbuster movie directed by Steven Spielberg, was released in 1975, and the film has been hailed by many as the “first summer blockbuster.”
The film was set in a New England resort town where a great white shark off the coast terrorized swimmers and boaters alike.
One of the men attacked on Wed. off the coast of Long Island was a longtime surfer who was knocked off his surfboard by a shark that left him bleeding from a four-inch bite on his leg.
In the other attack, a man from Ariz. was standing in waist-deep water off Long Island’s Seaview Beach when he was attacked from behind by a shark that bit him on his wrist and buttocks.
The victim was able to walk out of the water where he received first aid and was flown by a police helicopter to the hospital where he was treated and released.
Fatal shark attacks in 2022 have been reported to have occurred off the coasts of Columbia, Mexico and Australia.
Authorities point out that shark attacks are rare considering the millions of swimmers, surfers, and scuba divers who frequent coastal waters during the summer months.
Unlike in “Jaws” where the shark attacks were fatal, the 52 reported shark attacks in the U.S. in 2021 were not fatal.
Florida has the longest coastline in the lower 48 states, and 28 of the shark attacks were reported off its coast in 2021 compared to 19 other shark attacks reported off the other coastal waters of the U.S.
Of the 42 shark attacks that have been reported to have occurred in U.S. coastal waters in 2022, none have been fatal.
