E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSChris Myers, who was swimming with his son, suffered severe lacerations to his legs and ankles in a suspected shark attack at Ballston Beach in Truro, Mass.
A man who was attacked by a suspected shark while body surfing with his son near Cape Cod is expected to live, officials say.
The attack happened around 3:30 p.m. Monday when Chris Myers was body surfing and swimming with his teenage son off the coast of Ballston Beach, part of the Cape Cod National Seashore in Truro, Mass.
Witnesses on the beach say they saw a dorsal fin emerge from the water. Moments later, Myers was bleeding profusely from his feet and ankles.
“All of the sudden, between the two swimmers we saw a fin come up and something came through the water,” Anne-Marie Corner, who witnessed the attack, told NBC News affiliate WHDH. “It was a very large fin, easily 15 inches high, and came across and torqued a little towards the second swimmer and within seconds we realized it was a shark and the swimmer had been attacked.”
“It was, like, two people and this large dark blue-black thing came up and kind of torqued around and you saw this big dorsal fin and it, like, went back down,” another witness, Walter Palmer, told WHDH.
Myers is treated after a suspected shark attack Monday at Ballston Beach in Truro, Mass., on Cape Cod.
Gregory Skomal, a shark biologist with the state's Department of Fish and Game, later told a press conference that "the weight of evidence points to a white shark."
Witnesses say that beachgoers -- including a doctor and a nurse -- jumped into action immediately after the attack. Emergency responders quickly arrived at the scene, bandaged Myers' legs and carried him off the beach on a stretcher.
Myers is being treated at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he will undergo surgery.
Ballston Beach was open Tuesday, but officials posted signs around the beach warning beachgoers of the recent shark sighting.
Truro Town Administrator Rex Peterson told the Boston Globe that even if it was determined to be a shark attack, the beach would remain open because “sharks swim up and down the coast so closing that one particular beach didn’t’ seem to make a whole lot of sense.”
There have been concerns about shark attacks all summer. Earlier this month a kayaker had a close call with the shark, WHDH reported, and since June there have been several shark sightings near seals.
More content from NBCNews.com:
- Poll: Views on gun laws unchanged after theater massacre
- Baptist leader: Decision not to marry black couple 'unfortunate'
- Man shoots at police officer in dash-cam video
- Woman who snatched newborn in '87 gets 12 years in jail
- Berenstain Bears keep distance from Chick-fil-A
Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook
Leave a Comment:
Love the headline on the front page: Great white shark suspected in Cape Cop
attack :) Padabee, Padaboom!
Also the way it says, SUSPECTED SHARK ATTACK, why %ell yea it was a shark attack, take a look at the wound and they should figure that out. The media loves to put spin on reporting, makes it more intriguing.
It's like the Batman shooter. You have to refer to them as "suspected," even though everyone knows they are guilty!
I see the headline on the NBCNews front page STILL says "Cape Cop". Way to go guys!
"You are more likely to get in a fatal car accident than be bitten by a shark."
Google a map of our country. Look at the map. Imagine how many people spend most their time on land as opposed to the sea. People spend more time driving cars on land than they do swimming around in the ocean. Of course more people will be in car accidents.
If you swim in the ocean, especially on the surface, you might get attacked by a shark. Some sharks will eat you alive. They don't care how you taste. Any animal that will readily eat tires and beer cans will be more than willing to eat you.
Unless you deliberately step in front of a car, like deliberately swimming in shark infested water, think outside the box.
white sharks eat mostly seals and sea lions not fish! so we should start killing lions and bears and wolves and poison snakes because we wandering into their habitat, no! were just stupid and dont listen!
You almost had it right Nick the Greek, until you called yourself hardheaded and stupid. Answer me friend what purpose does a poisonous snake serve. If you tell me he eats things that are pests and would over populate like rats! No my friend there are a lot of non-poisonous snakes that will do the job just fine. lions eat all the animals I like, such as beautiful gazelles, I hate lions for that. Wolves eat my deer that make great pets and also are delicious on the barbee, and bears they eat too many salmon and are dangerous to humans so that we can't enjoy the great outdoors that God gave to humans. Got it humans. We protect the humans first.
Sharks menu: anything that fits in mouth. Main course: meat. Cut of meat: bite size. Dinner setting: ocean. Shark philosophy; how fast can you swim?
Body-surfing off Cape Cod? I thought the word was already out about sharks being in those waters.
There are approx. 300,000 grey seals on the Cape where before there were very few thanks to marine mammel protection... they aren't cute little puppies....sharks eat seals....this was not unexpected by locals. I'd say cull the seals but it's too late for that....GW's are here to stay.
Indigenous animals and other species are native to the water: humans are NOT! The old story about the man needing a way to cross the river and the alligator offers to let him ride on his back ends with the gator eating the man and saying to his shocked dinner~well you know a gator is a gator and does what we gators always do! And in modern colloquial terms a politician is always a politician too! EOR!
Obviously not.
We own the rivers too Pal. So if alligators are stopping humans from crossing the river, then guess what. The alligator has to move out. Humans didn't seem too concerned about displacing other humans, Indians, Jews, many others. But move a few fish and dangerous creatures and all the namby pambies want to give away the farm.
people are told of increasing numbers of attacks yet ignore them ,,,,
Heck, I'm not going to Cape COP anytime soon.
In all seriousness, I only clicked on this front page headline to see where this 'Cape Cop' was. :)
People need to start thinking about just staying out of the ocean, it's another food chain environment in itself. When you enter the ocean or even a lake or pond, your entering another food chain and become subject to losing your limbs if not your life. Why humans go into these places and take their chances is beyond me, seems like people just forget that there are other living creatures that eat meat to live too.
Yeah, it's like Americas pastime....going to the ocean and having fun, but in reality your either fish food or alligator food...taking your young child to the beach and letting them go out into the ocean should be looked at as the equivalent of letting your kid play in the street or worse.
Then to top it all off, they have to go and kill the animal that did this as though they were intelligent enough not to have done it in the first place and should know better when we are the intelligent ones and apparently to stupid to understand who caused all of this.
Vince go back into your Mother's basement and stay there. You are not smart enough to use a computer.
"we should kill all the sharks" really, what about the bears, while were at it we should get rid of them, bobcats, tigers, lions, but wait, there are 100,000 more dog attacks in the U.S. than shark attacks, so we should get rid of them too. Ok people here are some numbers for you. There were hundreds of thousands of dog bites in the U.S. last year and 18 resulted in deaths, there were an average of 16 attacks by sharks in the U.S. and no deaths, a five year low by the way. Before we kill all the sharks (impossible and stupid idea) why don't we just realize that some activities come with risks, those people that surf are not the ones screaming to get rid of all the sharks, its usually someone who has never been to the ocean anyway. Take your kids to the ocean, let them splash in the waves, if you are concerned about shark attacks, take them to the pool to swim or come to the great lakes.
You reminded me ... let's kill all the idiots, too.
Can't say I'm going to miss you Gerald.
stop overfishing the oceans and maybe theyll stay further out,,,,if theres no food they are gonna look elsewhere,,wouldnt you????
I wish that the media would stop referring to these incidents as "shark attacks." If the shark attacked, the person would not be found.
The fact is that the humans, time and again, mimic the sharks' prey - seals. When the case of mistaken identity occurs, the shark is demonized for "attacking," after a small bite and releasing the human.
Humans, on the other hand, DO attack sharks in the annual Martha's Vineyard shark fishing tournament. The shark's bodies are then thrown into the dumpster, after the event.
Sharks also like to eat tuna, which humans are depleting (along with billions of tons of by-kill) from the oceans.
The real story here is that humans are devastating the oceans, acting like shark food in the water and the media runs around like little children blaming the sharks. But the media is afraid of a story that may actually require themselves and viewer to think.
I have gone SCUBA diving with sharks many times, and they prefer to be left alone. Search "diving with sharks and sea lions" on YouTube.
Since we eat the sharks' fish, we need to eat the sharks too! Why don't you swim around until you can feed one of these noble creatures, and serve an honest purpose in life?
Imbecilic, tree-hugging morons want to protect the "beautiful" great white sharks from being killed, so they're going to feed on those who like the surf. We should feed the green weenies to the sharks, then kill them all! Who needs great whites? They're demons. Look at 'em, they all look like a younger Nancy Pelosi, with smaller teeth. You can SEE they should be slaughtered to extinction.
Now you're talking my boy.
I am sure the guy is a Jersey native. Nothing in it's right mind would eat anything from Jersey!
Animals are there for us to eat ... wear ... shoot for fun ... and make cute videos of. Not to be eaten by!
Brilliant. With two silly sentences, you've negated God's plan, Nature's ways, and millions of years in evolutionary development. Oh, wait... the predators don't care what you think. Enjoy your swim!
Actually, animals were not meant for us to eat. Vegetarianism is really the God given way, that is, if anyone out
there has a spiritual point of view. If not, just move on and don't listen to what you thinks is nuts.
For instance, Genesis 1 :28...I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which his fruit yielding seed, it shall be FOOD FOR YOU...
and TRUE prophets also spoke against eating meat and killing animals, i.e. Moses: You should not kill;
which includes the animals. "I hate, I despise your feasts .........and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
I will not look upon them.....Amos 5:21-23. Instructions for murder and animals sacrifices are attributed to God when priests of that day were still living under ancient and barbaric customs and changed and falsified scripture to fit their TASTE.
ALBERT EINSTEIN(1879-1955) "Nothing will increase the chances of survival for life on Earth as much as the EVOLUTION to a vegetarian diet." and "Purely through its physical effect on the human temperament, a vegetarian way of life would be able to influence the fate of mankind most positively."
First, researchers have been working for DECADES to come up with a "shark repellant." Second, it's been widely known that Great Whites have now returned PERMANENTLY to the CC coast due to the return of the seal population.
The simple fact is, you either stay out of the water, or be a little more aware of your surroundings. IIRC, there were seals spotted in the area where this guy was bitten. There's no way in hell I'd be in that water when I know that seals = Great Whites close by. If the guy knew this, then, in my opinion, he deserved to get a few stitches... That's just being plain stupid.
At least we aren't overreacting like other countries and trying "hunt the predator shark." The ocean is their domain.
When we enter the ocean, we also enter the food chain. We are most distinctly BELOW large predatory sharks on that chain. Add to that close proximity to their prey, mimicking the behavior of said prey i.e. surfing, kayaking, BODY SURFING, etc. and we're going to have some test bites. We're lucky most attacks ARE test bites. If these fish were truly after us, they'd be killing us outright by the tens of thousands every year. Great whites aren't even on the list of sharks that hunt humans. Most of that is done by tiger sharks, bull sharks, and oceanic whitetips. Even the much-maligned mako has little, if any desire to kill humans. Most attacks are motivated by fear or territoriality in these very nervous sharks.
The best way to avoid attacks by great whites is stay out of the water. Barring that, extreme caution and vigilance!!
Gooseman there you go again. The only sure fire way to make sure you don't get eaten by a great white is to eliminate the darn things.
It was Massachusetts Congressman icon Tip O'Neill who coined the phrase, "All politics are local." So too, all shark situations are local. The danger of shark attacks in Cape Cod escalated from the rare to the inevitable due to the meddling of Congress, which, in 1972, passed the Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act - and it changed Cape Cod from a safe swimming retreat into a death trap that we're only beginning to see come to fruition. The problem with the MMPA was that it included in its list of protected species two species that were NOT endangered: the harbor seal and the gray seal. The gray seal population on Monomoy Island, on the "elbow" tip of Cape Cod off Chatham, rose from about 10 seals to over 30,000! They are the favorite food of the Great White Shark, and these predators have altered their migration habits to target Cape Cod. Nice going, environmental wackos - whose indiscriminate application of animal protection has precipitated this new menace to all humans who were happily enjoying Cape Cod's beautiful beaches. This tragic destruction of a human playground was caused by politicians who knew nothing, and cared not at all, about the downstream effects of their legislation on HUMANS. They were far too concerned about the safety of seals for that. No wonder Mark Twain had such disgust for Congress all his life!
Most sharks are protected in the United States. I think it is crazy that we protect sharks from being caught and killed. There should be a limit as to how many but to protect them 100% leads to over populating of sharks which inturn leads to the decline of fish species that we eat. Has anyone took a look at what fish you can catch and keep these days. I fish alot in the ocean and there is never a problem of catching sharks. When they start biting I move to another spot. Game fish do not bite well when there are sharks present. I would find it hard to believe that sharks are endangered. I rate them right up there with alligators as needing protection 100%. Try swimming in a lake in Florida.
See Cpt Ronnie, you're the kind of person people should be listening too. You're out there on the water, you see the amount of sharks that are there, you know how many game fish sharks eat. One poster said sharks don't eat fish only seals and sea lions. Yea right. If you reduce the population of the close in shark species it will help the fish and the humans. Same thing for gators, allow thinning of the herd, there are just too dann many of them, they are all over several golf course I go to, there have been some unhappy meetings between the gator and a human lately too. I'm thinking of carrying my pistol with me a couple caps in the snout will change his mind about lunch.
Thats why God invented pools !
Dont worry everyone, the japs are on the verge of killing them off !