Any fatal wild animal attack against a human is horrific, but when the victim is a child, it is especially devastating. A 12-year-old Australian boy died on Saturday from injuries sustained during a shark attack in Sydney Harbor on January 18.
The victim, Nico Antic, and his friends were jumping off a 20-foot rock when a large shark bit the boy. He arrived at Sydney Children’s Hospital in critical condition after his friends rescued him from the water. While this is the only fatal shark attack in Australia so far this year, there have been several alarming incidents recently. CBS News reports:
The Sydney shark attack that killed Antic was one of four recorded in the span of two days, which prompted officials to close dozens of the city's beaches. Around noon on Monday, an 11-year-old boy was on a surfboard that was attacked by a shark. The boy was uninjured in the incident. Later that day, a surfer in his 20s was bitten on the leg by a shark. Another surfer had minor injuries after being bitten by a shark on Tuesday.
It is believed that bull sharks were involved in both the attack on Nico and the attack against the surfer. The CBS News report benignly describes the incident involving the surfer as a mere “bite on the leg,” but the details are pretty scary. One of his rescuers described what unfolded:
He sort of paused to catch his breath and then the shouting started. He’s just going "Shark! Shark! Shark! Shark!" And bouncing up and down, like, as I looked over and it was so animated I thought it was just a terrible joke. Then he starts shouting, "No joke, no joke! It’s biting me, it’s biting me! It’s eating me, it’s eating me! It’s killing me!"
The 27-year-old surfer Andre de Ruyer survived the attack, although his right leg had to be amputated. Two American women in the past month were less fortunate.
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A woman from Minnesota died after a shark bit her arm off during a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands. She screamed in terror during the attack. The Guardian reports: "A U.S. Virgin Islands news outlet named the St Thomas Source spoke with a nurse and former lifeguard who reportedly tried to help Lillis after he heard what he described as 'ungodly screaming' from her."
Another woman, a 55-year-old triathlete, died after a shark attack in Monterey Bay last month. There were no screams reported during this attack, just an eerie disappearance:
Fox vanished on Dec. 21 during a weekly group swim near Lovers Point in Pacific Grove—a spot inside Northern California’s notorious Red Triangle, one of the world’s most active great white shark zones.
Despite an exhaustive Coast Guard search spanning 84 square nautical miles, hope faded as days passed. On Dec. 27, her body was recovered from a remote beach south of Davenport in Santa Cruz County, still in her wetsuit and wearing a shark-deterrent band.
There was another attack in Northern California earlier this month when a shark bit a surfer and broke his board. The victim described it as "like being hit by a car."
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I was never scared by Jaws. Predators previously mentioned in this series, like mountain lions and bears, are far more terrifying to me than sharks. Maybe it’s because a hidden threat feels less frightening than one staring you right in the eyes, although Joe Rogan seems to disagree. He explained why he's so scared of the ocean and sharks on his podcast:
It’s terrifying. You should be scared. You can’t move good. There’s monsters in there. They’re real. This is what I always say about sharks. If there was a werewolf, and the werewolf came out every full moon. Every moon, if you were outside your house, you got murdered. You just got ripped apart. It happened to one person every full moon all across the land. … Sharks are like werewolves, but they’re werewolves every day of the year.
Are you as terrified of sharks as Rogan?
