A 10-year-old boy from Maryland was bitten by a shark while at a resort in the Bahamas and has been airlifted back to the U.S. for further treatment.
The shark attack occurred while the boy was “participating in an expedition in a Shark Tank at a local resort on Paradise Island,” the Royal Bahamas Police Force wrote in a release.
The boy was bitten on the right leg shortly before 4 p.m. on Monday and was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment. The investigation into the incident is ongoing.
On Thursday, CNN reported that the 10-year-old boy was airlifted back to the U.S. after undergoing a successful surgery at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas.
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“He was airlifted yesterday evening to the United States in stable condition to continue his care,” the Doctors Hospital Health System wrote in a statement.
The boy was not identified by police, nor was the type of shark involved in the attack, which occurred at the Atlantis Bahamas resort.
The owner and operator of the shark tank experience said Wednesday that his company is co-operating with authorities and that expeditions are currently closed.
Stuart Cove, of Blue Adventures, said a dive instructor and dive guide were in the water when the boy was bitten and they provided immediate medical attention.
“Incidents like this involving interactions with marine life, even with the species of sharks included in this experience, are rare and never acceptable,” he said.
Cove added that this is the first “guest-related incident” to impact the shark tank experience since it began in 2006.
Shark attacks are extremely rare.
The International Shark Attack File, run by the Florida Museum of Natural History, found 108 reports of shark-human interactions in 2022 around the world. Of those reports, 57 were confirmed to be unprovoked shark bites, while 32 incidents were deemed “provoked bites,” in which a human initiated interactions with a shark in some way.
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