Shark bites a tourist who was trying to take a photo with it
A tourist trying to photograph a shark in shallow water at a beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands this month was bitten by it and flown off the island to receive medical care, the local government said.
The tourist was treated at a hospital before she left the island, Providenciales, a sandy, 38-square-mile magnet for snorkelers and sun-seekers that is ringed by turquoise waters.
The shark was about 6 feet long, according to the Turks and Caicos government, but its species was unclear.
The tourist had 'attempted to engage with the animal' to take pictures of it before she was bitten on Feb. 7, the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources in Turks and Caicos said in a statement.
Her identity was not immediately released and officials did not describe the extent of her injuries.
The beach was closed but reopened on Feb. 9 after the shark was found to have moved into deeper water, according to the environment department. Turks and Caicos, an archipelago, is a British territory and one of the Caribbean's fanciest tourist destinations.
Shark bites are extremely rare and are typically accidents, experts say. But sharks can cause severe wounds when they mistake humans for prey.
Worldwide, there were 88 confirmed or potential shark bites logged last year by the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida, an organization that tracks shark data.
Twenty-four were provoked, meaning that a human had initiated contact with the shark, according to the organization. Four people died from shark bites. One of last year's recorded bites was in Turks and Caicos; it was not fatal.
The file's director, Gavin Naylor, said Saturday that it was too soon to say if this month's bite in Turks and Caicos was provoked or unprovoked.
But Chris Stefanou, a New York fisherman and conservationist who tags sharks, said that photographing sharks can carry risks and that the shark might have confused a phone for a fish.
'Sharks, or any predatory animal in the ocean, can confuse that as like a bait fish,' Stefanou said, referring to small, shiny fish that draw sharks to shore. 'The shark didn't just see a human: 'Ooh, I'm hungry, I want to go take a bite.' That did not happen.'
The episode was not the only reported shark bite in the Caribbean on Feb. 7. Two Americans were injured in what appeared to be a shark encounter in Bimini Bay in the northern Bahamas, according to the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
Naylor said two bites in one day in the region was unusual and made him 'sit up a little.'
But it was not clear whether there was any trend. The number of confirmed unprovoked shark bites dropped to 47 last year, down from 69 the year before, according to the International Shark Attack File.
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