Boy Airlifted After Shark Attack at Cocoa Beach

An 11-year-old boy was hospitalized Sunday morning following a reported shark attack in the Cocoa Beach area.

The attack happened just before 11 a.m. near Lori Wilson Park, according to Florida Today. The boy was airlifted to Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando for treatment of a severe leg injury. While it is unclear what type of shark was involved in the attack, swimmers in the area reported seeing small bull sharks. The boy was repeatedly in waist-deep water when he was bitten twice.

This attack comes on the heels of several attacks on the east coast in late May. In one of those cases, a 14-year-old girl was bitten on the foot during a stay at Cocoa Beach. That attack involved a 19-year-old woman who was in the water at New Smyrna beach. She was also bitten on the foot, the Palm Beach Post reported. An attack also happened recently in Seminole County, the paper noted.

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A man also had an encounter with a shark in 2 feet of water on Florida’s Gulf Coast. That attack resulted in a 60-year-old man requiring a trip to the hospital.

Earlier this week, a Florida diver managed to capture an encounter with a 16-foot great white shark on video. No injuries resulted from that encounter.

Shark encounters are quite common in Florida. The state leads the nation in attacks with 28 bites on record in 2014 alone. East coast counties top the state in the number of attacks with Volusia County taking dubious first-place honors in 2014 with 10 documented bites. Brevard trailed with eight. While the number of bites is up, researchers say there were no fatalities in 2014. The last shark-attributed fatality on record in Florida dates back to 2010.

Whether Florida will lead the nation and the world in the number of attacks in 2015 remains to be seen, but George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus, said people need to remember “there has to be an understanding when you enter the sea, it’s a wilderness experience.”

To learn more about sharks in Florida, visit the Florida Museum of Natural History online.