In the waters near the Bahamas on Tuesday, a shark attacked and killed a U.S. cruise ship passenger who was snorkeling, according to authorities.
A 58-year-old Pennsylvania woman was involved in the incident, which happened at a well-liked snorkeling location close to Green Cay in the northern Bahamas, police spokeswoman Chief Superintendent Chrislyn Skippings told The Associated Press.
She said, “It’s unfortunate.
According to Skippings, the woman’s family determined it to be a bull shark.
In a statement to the AP, Royal Caribbean International said that the person passed away after being admitted to a nearby hospital for treatment and that the company is assisting their loved ones.
They claimed that the passenger had been traveling on Harmony of the Seas, which left Florida on Sunday and had been taking part in an independent shore excursion in Nassau.
With two reported incidents in 2019, one of them fatal, the Bahamas has seen the majority of shark attacks in the Caribbean. A Southern California woman on vacation was attacked by three sharks in that incident near Rose Island, which is only a half-mile from where the attack on Tuesday took place.
The first fatal shark attack in that region occurred in the French Caribbean territory of St. Martin in December 2020.
According to the Florida-based International Shark Attack File, since 1749, at least 32 shark attacks have been documented in the Bahamas, followed by 13 attacks in Cuba, including one in 2019.
According to Michael Heithaus, a marine biologist at Florida International University in Miami, the high number of attacks in the Bahamas is probably related to the region’s dense population of swimmers and healthy marine ecosystem.
Except for bull sharks and tiger sharks, he claimed that the Bahamas are home to a variety of shark species, the majority of which are unconcerned with humans.
Heithaus noted that sharks can be attracted to food, sounds, and smells in the water and that they grow to very large sizes and consume large prey.
But overall, he emphasized, shark attacks are still uncommon.
According to the International Shark Attack File, there were 137 shark attacks worldwide last year, 69 of which were unprovoked.