Sharks 'test' for food during bites, experts say
So far this month, there have been two shark bites off the North Carolina coast.
Paige Winter, 17, lost part of her leg to a shark bite off Atlantic Beach on June 2.
On June 10, a shark bit 19-year-old Austin Reed while he was swimming off Ocean Isle Beach.
Experts are trying to raise awareness about sharks and their behavior as more and more people head to the beach for the summer.
Reed remembers the shark tugging him down after the bite.
“I felt like the shark was about to go into a frenzy with all the blood in the water,” he said.
His friend and mother, an emergency room nurse, rushed to his rescue.
Reed's doctors said his bites were consistent with a very large shark.
Winter is still recovering at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville.
Marine life experts say when sharks are scared or confused, their natural instinct is to use their mouths to explore what's around them.
“It’s not necessarily looking to bite people,” said Jeff Plumlee, a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences. “It’s looking for is food. It finds something that could be food, tests, and typically it's not something it's looking to eat. So that’s why you generally see one bite and then it's completely off in another direction.”
There are more than 500 different species of sharks in the world, and about 50 of those are found in North Carolina waters.
Of those, only 26 are found in waters close to the shore. They are usually looking for warmer temperatures and food.
While most shark encounters with humans are a matter of mistaken identity, experts still say they are extremely rare.
“These are so uncommon it's kind of unbelievable,” said Stuart May, with the N.C. Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. “When you have millions of people in the water, especially in the summertime – and certainly just along this area you have tens of thousands of people in the water at any given time – and we usually end up talking about a one, two, maybe three, at most, incidents that happen all summer.”
Experts add that most encounters do occur in near-shore waters.
They say swimmers should avoid areas around piers where people are fishing and avoid where you can see bait schooling, or where fishing cleaning is occurring.
Swimmers can also reduce their risk by staying in groups and avoiding the water during dawn, dusk, darkness or twilight hours.
Swimmers should not enter the water if they are bleeding.
