Shark Attack: Florida Man Bitten While At Huguenot Park As Area Incidents Continue

A man was bitten on his forearm by a shark around 5 p.m. local time Tuesday while he was swimming at Huguenot Park in Jacksonville, Florida. The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department said he was taken to UF Health Hospital and that the bite was not life-threatening.

He is expected to make a full recovery.

There have been other regional cases of shark attacks in recent months, with Jacksonville outlet News4Jax claiming the latest as the fifth attack in Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia waters in 2019. Sharks often move closer to shores in warm water.

In late July, 23-year-old surfer Frank O'Rourke was bitten near Jacksonville Beach Pier. O'Rourke said he bandaged his bite mark wounds, without stitches, and went to a beachside bar for free drinks instead of the hospital.

On July 12, a 16-year-old girl had wounds on her heel and ankle after being attacked while riding a boogie board near Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort outside of Jacksonville.

Florida, which has a diverse shark population, has had the most shark attacks in the world, with at least 828 reported incidents since 1837. The shark species most likely to attack humans are the great white, tiger shark and bull shark. Blacktip sharks, in particular, like to swim close to Florida shores, with thousands of the species migrating to Florida in the late winter and early spring.

Many sharks are moving north due to the warming waters from climate change.

“There’s an astounding mass migration of animal life towards the poles,” Malin Pinsky, an associate professor at Rutgers University's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, told the Daily Beast in July 2018.