Woman allegedly bit by shark off Rockaway Beach
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By Ryan Schwach
A shark reportedly bit a woman off the shores of Queens’ Rockaway Beach on Monday night, leaving her in critical condition. The incident is believed to be the first shark attack off Queens’ waters in decades.
According to the New York City Parks Department, a 65-year-old woman was swimming at Beach 59th Street in the Edgemere section of Rockaway just before 6 p.m. when she was bitten by a shark in the left leg.
Parks lifeguards removed the woman from the water and administered first aid. She was given a tourniquet by NYPD officers. The woman was rushed by EMS to Jamaica Hospital where she remains in critical condition.
Police officials told the Eagle Monday night just following the incident that the woman was likely to survive the alleged shark attack.
The NYPD deployed both helicopters as well as surveillance drones over the water on Monday night, but Parks says no sharks were spotted.
Prior to yesterday’s incident, there have been no reports of shark bites on Rockaway Beach in recent memory, the department says. According to an animal blog, there have been two reported shark attacks on Rockaway Beach, the last one taking place in 1953.
According to the site, Animals Around the Globe, the last time a shark injured a swimmer in Rockaway was Sept. 3, 1953, when 15-year-old Alan Stevenson Jr. was fishing for sea bass when he hooked an 80-pound sand shark, which bit him in the leg.
Due to Monday’s attack, all seven-miles of city beach in Rockaway were closed to swimming and surfing on Tuesday.
A shark spotting was reported off of Breezy Point at the tip of the Rockaway peninsula on Tuesday afternoon, NYPD helicopters responded but no injuries were reported.
“We hope for a full recovery for this swimmer,”a Parks spokesperson said in a statement. “Though this was a frightening event, we want to remind New Yorkers that shark attacks in Rockaway are extremely rare. We remain vigilant in monitoring the beach and always clear the water when a shark is spotted.”
While shark encounters are rare in New York City, the Parks Department, NYPD and other Eastern coastal localities maintain the “shark communication network”, which allows communication in shark sightings and signs in the region.
Last summer, the area was gripped with a shark fever of sorts, with multiple shark sightings along beaches in New York City and Long Island.
In Rockaway, there were at least three separate sightings in August and July, including one where a shark “bumped” a swimmer, The Wave reported. The sightings resulted in a brief swimming closure.
Hans Walters, a shark specialist at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium and a Queens native, told The Wave last year that sharks are attracted to schooling fish called Menhaden, which populate local waters.
In their pursuit of the fish, they may accidentally attack a human, Walters said.
“In all of these cases, what happens is a shark is swimming through a school of menhaden,” he said, adding that most shark attacks are incidents of “thrashing,” where a shark inadvertently cuts a human with their fins, rather than bites.
“I think that we have to realize that when we go into the ocean, we are going into somebody else’s house,” Walters told The Wave. “I’m not trying to be a shark apologist nor am I trying to minimize the trauma [of] the people that have had these encounters…but by the same token, it’s their ocean.”
