Shark Allegedly Bites 11-Year-Old Girl In Spain
An 11-year-old girl received severe injuries on her foot after a suspected shark attack Saturday in the waters off Grao de Moncofa beach in Spain.
Lifeguards, who rushed to her rescue struggled to prevent the blood flow from her foot, described the incident as “never seen anything like.”
They, however, refused to confirm whether the injury was caused due to a shark bite.
The girl was admitted to a nearby hospital, and it was observed that the deep wound on her foot were consistent with bites from a type of blue shark measuring between 60 and 70 cm.
Though beach goers were warned to stay away from the waters, no one paid any heed to the warning since it was not a confirmed shark attack and the animal was not spotted by anyone around the area, Metro reported.
According to Metro, though there are more than 90 species of sharks in the waters off Spanish Mediterranean beaches, this is the first attack (if confirmed) of its kind in the last three decades.
In June, an 8-feet-long shark began stalking holiday-goers near the shallow waters of many beaches on Majorca Island, Spain, forcing many of them to be closed down, Daily Star reported.
The last time a shark attack was reported in Spain was way back in 1986, when a windsurfer was bitten by a great white shark and had to have his leg amputated.
However, shark attacks have increased in general all over the world in the last few years.
On Aug. 27, an 11-foot-long bull shark bit a 3-year-old girl, Violet, near Bathtub Reef Beach, about 50 miles north of West Palm Beach, Florida. She was in the water with her mother Jessica Veatch when the incident happened.
“She went out there, she was about two feet away from her,” said Richard Traychuk, the child's mother's boyfriend, according to KNXV-TV. “She heard Violet scream. She turned around, picked her up. Thought she had stepped on something and when she picked her up out of the water, she was missing a big chunk of her leg.”
Traychuk blamed the incident on a group of young spear fishers near the area where the family was taking a dip. He suspected the smell of the blood of the dead fish attracted sharks from the deep waters to wade toward the shore.
“It doesn’t take a brain scientist to know that you shouldn’t bring bloody fish probably where people are swimming,” he said.
On Aug. 29, Australian surfer Marcel Brundler, 37, narrowly escaped getting bitten by a shark in the waters off the outskirts of Melbourne, by kicking and punching the 10-foot long predator.
"My mate was screaming out, and I said 'Nah, don't worry, it's just a dolphin but then I realized quick it was a massive dorsal fin—like, big. And I said, 'Oh s***,'" recalled Brundler in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Though Brundler got away from the attack unscathed, the shark did manage to graze his butt when it came back again after the surfer had fended it off the first time with his board.
"Then it kind of dived off, came back and circled me, and took a fair notch out of my board, circled me again, then it got me on my wettie, it got me on my hip," Brundler added.
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