A North Carolina shark attack that occurred on Wednesday afternoon left a 68-year-old man with bites on his rib cage, hip, lower leg, and both hands as the state marks the seventh incident in a string of record-breaking shark attacks this summer.
The highest previous total of shark attack victims off the coast of
North Carolina was five in 2010, The New York Times reported. The Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File has been keeping these records for the last 80 years.
The latest attack occurred about 25 to 30 feet off the coast of Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks, and it now ranks as the 24th attack the U.S. has
seen this year, according to USA Today. The man was yanked underwater by a 6 to 7 foot long gray shark before he broke loose and swam to shore.
“There was a big trail of blood from the
water to the sand,” witness Stephen Lee told CNN. “There's still people here and some people have gotten back in the water, and the park rangers are just now trying to vacate the area. We will likely go back in the water, but maybe not get our whole bodies in today.”
Thus far into the summer, only one shark attack in Hawaii has proved fatal, according to USA Today, although two teens lost all or part of one arm less than 90 minutes apart from each other off the coast of Oak Island in North Carolina.
Because of the summer drought sweeping across the Carolinas, fresh water runoff into the oceans has decreased, allowing for saltier waters that attract sharks nearer to the shores, Shark Attack File director George Burgess told USA Today.
“This is a situation that we can't ignore, as we've had a number of attacks that are serious within a short period of time,” Burgess said. “There's something going on there, there's no doubt about that. It's a perfect storm of environmental and biological variables, as well as human activity.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.