SURF CITY, N.C. — The Surf City Police Department say an 8-year-old boy was bitten by a shark Wednesday.
The boy, whose name has not been released, suffered “minor leg and foot injuries” from what appeared to be a “small shark bite,” according to ABC News.
Officials said the incident happened near 700 S. Shore Drive.
The boy was treated by emergency workers on the beach. The boy’s parents also took him to the emergency room.
The attack comes after two recent ones in North Carolina. On June 14, Kiersten Yow, 12, of Asheboro was attacked by a shark. She lost her arm below the elbow and was injured in her leg when she was attacked by a shark at Oak Island. On the same day, two miles away a teenager was attacked and lost his arm.
A vacationer also captured video of a shark on the North Carolina beach where Yow was recently was bitten, just two days after the twin shark attacks.
There has been an increase in the amount of shark attacks in the United States during the last decade, with a large number of these incidents occurring along the Atlantic coast.
According to the International Shark Attack File, we have seen a drastic increase in the amount of reported shark attacks since 1900, with each decade having more attacks than the previous one. In 2014, out of 130 incidents of alleged shark-human interactions worldwide, 72 of these incidents represented confirmed cases of unprovoked shark attacks on humans.
In addition, North American waters had the highest number of shark incidents in the world in 2014 with a total of 45. These accounted for 62.5 percent of all attacks across the globe. Of those attacks, 39 out of 45 occurred along Atlantic coast beaches.
Surf City is a town in Pender and Onslow counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The population was 1,853 at the 2010 census. It is located on Topsail Island.
