The video of a huge shark walking among bathers very close to the shore earlier this week on a beach in northwest Florida with viralized on social networks, where the uneven reaction of the witnesses was surprising.
The incident occurred on Monday in Navarre Beachin Santa Rosa County, about 23 miles from Pensacola.
In the images filmed by a direct witness to the incident, Cristy McCallie Cox, some people are seen running out of the water quickly, while others take it more calmly and just follow the shark’s path in case your route changed and you had to run away.
In the video it is heard that some people who were on the shore were shouting “Get out of the water, get out!”; “hurry up!”.
Apparently the shark – whose species has not been determined so far – was simply chasing a school of fish.
“Everything happened very quickly. A dolphin was next to the shark at first and then it just disappeared. The shark was just trying to feed, as you would expect, and passed the swimmers. Everyone was stunned when the shark washed up on the beach. We all have to remember that this is natural and that we are at home, so be alert!” Cox said in statements to the local press.
The Director of Beach Safety, Austin Turnbill, confirmed that a shark had been seen in Navarre and clarified that it is not usually a cause for alarm when they are sighted.
“There are sharks in the Gulf, everywhere. We see sharks almost every day and there is nothing to be alarmed about 99.9% of the time”said.
It is not the first sighting of this type in recent days. A day earlier, on Sunday, bathers on a beach in Perdido Key, in Escambia County, Florida, experienced a chilling scene when a huge shark approached them and began to move very strongly near the shore.
Apparently the shark was devouring some fish a few meters from the shore. In the images, at least two people were left in the sea on inflatable rafts and desperately asking for help.
Earlier this week, another unusual event emerged when a woman from Fort Lauderdale who was competing on a paddle surf board off the coast of South Florida was followed by a hammerhead shark who surrounded her and followed her during part of the journey, until the woman boarded a boat to get to safety.
recently a 12 year old girl survived to three bites from a shark at Cocoa Beach, a beach in Florida. Magnolia Woodhead, a Pennsylvania resident, told the media that she was swimming south of the pier in Cocoa Beach when a shark latched onto her leg and bit her three times.
Florida was the state with the most US unprovoked bites last year, according to the International Shark Attack File 2022 report from the Florida Museum of Natural History.
Florida’s 16 cases accounted for 39% of the US total and 28% of unprovoked bites worldwide. Notably, that number was lower than Florida’s most recent five-year annual average of 22 incidents.
