A woman was “seriously” bitten by a shark, following which authorities had to close three Maui beaches. The French woman, 51, was swimming, or possibly snorkeling, in the water about 100 feet from the Maui coast in Hawaii when she was attacked by a shark.
Officials said the unnamed woman suffered a “serious” bite at Paia Bay at around 4:10 pm on Saturday, September 3. Beachgoers brought her back to shore before emergency services arrived at the scene and helped her. She was rushed to Maui Memorial Medical Center in critical condition.
Baldwin Beach Park, Lower Paia Beach Park, and Kuau Bay Beach Park have been closed since then. They are supposed to be reopened at 7 am on Monday, September 5. Warning signs were put up along the beach after the attack.
A series of horrifying shark bites were reported in the days leading up to the latest incident involving the French woman. A teenage girl’s leg had to be amputated after a shark attack in late June. The incident took place as she was scalloping with her brother. Another woman was attacked by a shark, which bit her arm just feet away from her eight-year-old grandson along the coast in South Carolina. She had to get hundreds of stitches following the incident.
Lifeguards in Long Island saw an increase in shark sightings in the last two years. One beach lifeguard from New York, Cary Epstein, explained how he noticed more shark sightings at the beach in the last two years than he did in his entire career, spanning as many as 25 years. Lifeguards often capture shark sightings using drones.
“Our minds were blown,” Epstein said, according to phys.org. “I started finding sharks. A lot of them.” In July, New York Gov Kathy Hochul urged state agencies to increase their surveillance after five people on Long Island beaches were bitten by sharks over the course of two just weeks.
A very large shark has a brain the size of a walnut.
Sharks are attracted to the scent of blood. Women like to swim in the ocean, where sharks reside! If they are in their menses, sharks are attracted to the scent of blood. They will take a bite of something that is bleeding, even a drop of blood.
There is NO equity in the natural world. Notice that the shark, on the coast of South Carolina, bit the woman and spared her son. he wasn’t bleeding.
Can we please stop saying shark attack…the shark did not plot out a plan to take out an individual. A person goes into the shark’s natural habitat and when the shark does what it does, it looks for food, it’s an attack. No, this attitude and sensationalism has to stop. If a person does not want to risk being bitten by a shark, stay out of their habitat. Every surfer I know would tell you the same thing. The shark is not the problem, the person is.