A man swimming at Jones Beach on Long Island on Thursday may have been bitten by a shark, according to the Nassau County Police Department.
The 57-year-old man was swimming in the ocean around 1 p.m. when he “suffered a laceration to his right leg,” Nassau police said in a news release Friday.
The medics who treated the man’s injury described it as a possible shark bite. Nassau County officials said they will increase patrols at all county beaches through the Fourth of July weekend.
Last year, after several shark sightings at Jones and Lido beaches, officials briefly closed several beaches and began boat patrols along the shoreline.
Attacks are extremely rare in the area, and many experts say the patrols do little more than fuel unwarranted fear of sharks. Scientists say the reason more sharks seem to be being spotted is because more people are looking for them.
Hans Walters, a field scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium, said there is no real evidence that local shark populations have increased in recent years. He called the threat sharks pose to people on New York beaches “very far-fetched.”
At a news conference Friday morning at Nickerson Beach, west of Jones Beach, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman was vague on the details of the report of the potential attack.
“I believe he’s on his leg,” he told reporters, adding that “there’s no explanation as to how he got his injuries.”
The surgeons who treated the man “thought it looked like a fish bite, probably a shark bite,” Mr. Blakeman said.
As for whether the injury was caused by a shark, he said, “It’s not 100 percent, but it was a level of concern.”
With a police boat watching the ocean behind him, Mr. Blakeman announced that county police would increase patrols this summer, both by boat and helicopter, with hourly patrols along the shoreline.
The county will also conduct drone surveillance of ocean swimmers, he said, “to make sure we have a good picture of what’s going on.”
“We want to emphasize to everyone that it is safe to enter the ocean,” he said, adding that bathers should always swim with friends and in the presence of a lifeguard.
A spokesman for the state parks department, which manages Jones Beach, referred the calls to county police, and a hospital spokeswoman said no information was available about the patient.
On the boardwalk at Jones Beach Friday afternoon, Isabella Mejia, 20, a college student from Whitestone, Queens, backed away when she heard the news of the possible bite.
“It’s crazy to think that would happen here,” she said. “But it’s something that doesn’t happen often, so it doesn’t really terrify me. I would still go in the water if there were already a lot of people there.
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