For the second time in less than a week, we have reports of a Florida shark bite. This time, a woman was bitten on the foot by a shark in the shallow water off the coast of Volusia County, Florida.
On Thursday, the 21-year-old vacationer from Oregon was standing in about four feet of water at Daytona Beach Shores when she was bitten.
The woman did not see the shark, but her injuries were consistent with a shark bite, officials said. They called her injuries non-life-threatening, and she was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
Those same terms were used last Friday when a 64-year-old local resident was bitten while sitting on a paddleboard at New Smyrna Beach.
But to the victim, the incident was anything but routine. “He wouldn’t let go, and he started thrashing and shaking me and he was pulling me. He was trying to get away with me like I was a fish,” Adrienne Wikso told the CBS affiliate in Miami. She underwent four hours of surgery as a result of the attack.
Wikso said without her board, the shark might have pulled her into the water. But she was able to stay on top of the board and use her other foot to kick the shark. A friend pushed her all the way to shore after the attack, a move she called brave.
“I was bleeding really bad and he was in the trail, the blood trail, and who knew if this guy was following us?” she asked.
The attack has left the longtime surfer unsure if she’ll venture back into the water, even though it has always been her happy place.
“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “I’m not one of those people who say ‘Oh, I’ll be back, I got just a nibble, I’ll be back.’ I don’t know right now.”
There have been at least six shark attacks off the Florida coast in the last six weeks. They are taking place in what officials believe is one of the world’s largest shark migrations happening off the state’s coast.
Volusia County carries the dubious nickname of the shark attack capital of the world. Of the 16 recorded attacks in Florida in 2020, half took place in Volusia.
