A Georgia man says he felt a shark “clamp down” on his foot and lived to tell the tale. He became the second person injured in a likely shark attack on Hilton Head Island beaches in less than a week.
Statesboro resident Tyler Hall was wading chest-deep at Burkes Beach around 3:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon when he felt the shark “put its whole mouth” around his foot, he told WJCL 22. He quickly rushed to shore while warning nearby swimmers about the danger in the water.
Hall’s girlfriend watched him come out of the surf, noticing “blood everywhere” on his foot. The injury called for nine stitches and a brief break from work.
“There’s always going to be sharks in the water, so that’s just a risk that you have to take,” he said. “I’m just glad I still got my toes and everything else.”
For about an hour afterwards, lifeguards cleared the waters on a two-mile stretch of the beach, from the Hilton Head Resort to the island’s Westin Resort & Spa.
Saturday’s incident came just five days after another apparent shark encounter in Hilton Head waters: Shortly after noon on July 22, a woman emerged from the water with minor injuries “consistent with a bite” on her foot, according to Shore Beach Service, the island’s privately contracted beach patrol. She was not hospitalized and had the bleeding under control by the time lifeguards responded.
Two recorded bites within a week is highly atypical for Hilton Head — last summer, town officials reported only one shark attack, when a 60-year-old man swimming in Sea Pines was bitten in late July.
Sharks are frequently present in the murky waters of coastal South Carolina beaches, but the cartilaginous fish are mostly disinterested in humans, according to Bryan Frazier, the principal shark researcher at the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
“They are there most of the time. We don’t see them because the water is murky, but they are there,” Frazier told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette last year. “They live in the ocean and they feed in that surf zone because there is bait in that surf zone.”
Although the Palmetto State averages only about four bites per year, Shore Beach Service’s lifeguards are trained to monitor Hilton Head waters for sharks and provide medical care in the event of an attack.
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