North Carolina Shark Attack 2017: Man Attacked Helping Fisherman
A North Carolina man helping to bring a shark back to shore got a nasty surprise when it suddenly bit his arm. The man went into the water near Johnnie Mercer's Pier on Wrightsville Beach and tried to help the fishermen last Thursday.
Catherine Patton, a pier employee, witnessed the incident. According to Patton, they were pulling the shark back to shore when it suddenly whipped and bit the man in the arm.
"There was a lot of blood," says Patton who says the man was later taken away in an ambulance. Police and firefighters rushed to the scene only to find out that the man was already taken to a nearby hospital.
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There are currently no details regarding the severity of the man's wounds or the type of shark that was involved in the incident. This was the second incident of a shark attack in North Carolina in the past four months.
Back in March, an exchange student from Germany also had his close encounter when a 1,000 pound, 12-foot great white shark ripped off a smaller shark he had hooked on his fishing line. Jannick Schroeder who was studying at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington went fishing about 30 miles off shore when the great white ripped apart his catch, rammed his boat, and took a bite out of its engine.
The state is among the locations which have seen a high frequency of shark attacks over the years. Between 2007 and 2016, a total of 33 shark attacks were reported in the state. There is a possibility that this number could rise dramatically with the shark population increasing due to favorable conditions.
North Carolina broke the records back in 2015 when a total of eight people were attacked by sharks. None of the attacks were fatal and were probably due to the sharks mistaking the humans as their prey.
