Long Island steps up shark patrols after swimmers are bitten

Long Island officials have stepped up shark patrols after authorities responded to several reports of people being bitten by sharks in various locations around the July 4 holiday.

Two adults were separately bitten off the coast of Fire Island on Tuesday afternoon, according to Suffolk County Police. A man was swimming in the ocean off Fire Island Pines when a shark bit his right hand, officials said. Hours later, a woman was bitten in the thigh while swimming west of Cherry Grove.

Both were taken to South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore, where they were treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

On Monday, a 15-year-old boy was bitten on the left foot while surfing at Kismet Beach on Fire Island, officials said. His heel and toes were intact, they said, and he was taken to Good Samaritan University Hospital in West Islip.

Also on Monday, a 15-year-old girl was treated by medical workers at Robert Moses State Park for three minor stab wounds to her left leg, but it was “unknown what marine life was responsible for the bites,” the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation said in a statement.

The Suffolk County Police Department said its marine agency and aviation sector would conduct more patrols on the beaches. Steven Bellone, the Suffolk County executive, said at a news conference on Thursday that the county planned to acquire two new drones to search for marine life and would train lifeguards to operate them.

The encounters came after similar efforts last year forced Long Island lifesaving departments to take shark sightings and interactions more seriously.

“This makes it clear that last summer was not an aberration,” said Mr. Bellone. “Shark bites and shark incidents are something that we will have to address more often.”

The opening of Robert Moses State Park was delayed by more than an hour Tuesday morning after a drone captured footage of what a state official initially described as about 50 “sand sharks.” The state parks bureau said Thursday that “it was later determined that the animals were likely a different species of fish.”

The presence of sharks in the waters off New York is not unusual, said Tobey Curtis, a shark expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But there’s been an “unexpected increase in shark bites on humans there over the past two years,” he said, adding that prior to last summer, such encounters were “few and far between.”

Several elements come into play, he said. Water quality around New York State has improved over the past two decades, and more people are visiting beaches now that summers have gotten hotter. Populations of some shark species have grown along the Atlantic coast, and the smaller fish they feed on swim closer to Long Island’s popular beaches. The result, he said, is an increased risk of shark encounters.

To stay safe, experts recommend not swimming at dawn or dusk, when predators are most active; swimming with other people; and only swim on beaches with lifeguards. People should research water conditions as best they can before swimming, Mr Curtis said, because the presence of seabirds, dolphins or schools of fish could indicate a food source for sharks.

“If you start swimming into that school of fish, you kind of enter the food chain,” he said. Sharks are typically not interested in biting humans, but they may do so accidentally, he added. And when they do, humans have to be aggressive and fight back by punching a shark in the nose or eyes.

But the chance of being bitten by a shark remains small. There were 57 unprovoked bites worldwide in 2022, according to the International Shark Attack dossier, a scientific database of shark attacks maintained by the Florida Museum of Natural History. Of those, 41, including one fatal encounter, took place in the United States. Eight non-fatal incidents occurred in New York.

The sharks that swim near New York tend to be juveniles, unlike other coastal areas. In Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, where observations of great white sharks are also on the rise, NOAA typically records sharks over 10 feet in length. By comparison, near Long Island, most sharks are less than six feet long, and many are even more than four feet, Curtis said.

“They’re still big fish, but they’re not the kind of animal that can take a limb off,” he said. “It’s an animal that can give you a nasty bite.”