Photo: Boca Raton Fire Rescue
This shouldn’t be classified as a shark attack. In fact, I really hope it’s not classified as such when surveys and studies review the statistics of people “attacked” by the ever ferocious and terrifying shark in 2016. In the grand scheme of things it’s hard to make light of the idea because in real life there are people who have lost family members or had their live’s flipped upside down by an encounter with the ocean’s apex predator. This isn’t one of those stories. And I guess if you had to choose a shark to go toe to toe with and live to tell the tale, you’d pick a Nurse shark. So that’s exactly what this lady did in Boca Raton over the weekend.
A 23-year old woman walked out of the water with a shark attached to her arm. It had bitten her on the forearm and wouldn’t let go, like a Pit bull with lockjaw. When lifeguards and other beach goers tried to help detach the shark from her right arm, it still didn’t let go. The shark died, and you guessed it, the guy still didn’t let go. So eventually the “victim” was taken to the hospital…with that same shark still attached to her arm. Talk about persistence.
“Knowingly or not, people swim near nurse sharks every day without incident,” said a representative of the National Park Service. “Attacks on humans are rare but not unknown and a clamping bite typically results from a diver or fisherman antagonizing the shark with hook, spear, net, or hand.”
The real victim here is the 2-foot nurse shark that lost its fight with a forearm. Some witnesses say they saw the lady antagonizing the animal by grabbing at its tail as it swam by, which explains the clamping bite til the death. And my guess is the small fish decided if he was going down for the count then he was doing so by ruining somebody’s weekend at the beach.
So there you have it folks, the current leading candidate for dumbest addition to 2016’s shark attack statistics.
