Shark ATTACKS 18-Year-Old Surfer at Florida Beach
The young instructor hurt his foot, bringing the total number of bites at New Smyrna to four this year.
An 18-year-old was riding a wave in a Florida town famous for shark run-ins when one clamped down on his foot.
The surfer, still unnamed, works as a part-time surf instructor, local NBC station WESH said. He was on New Smyrna Beach just after noon Friday, July 18, when the bite happened, Tamra Malphurs of Volusia County Beach Safety Ocean Rescue told FOX 35 and other outlets including the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
Once pulled from the water, he was rushed to a nearby hospital with cuts that doctors described as serious but not life-threatening, Malphurs added. The teen’s boss later called the wound “nasty,” WESH reported.
An anonymous witness says multiple first responders showed up quickly after a surfer was bitten near Volusia County’s shore. This incident marks the fourth shark run-in recorded in the county this year, data from the county website shows.
The bystander recalled to WESH that two ambulances and a police cruiser “came pretty quickly” once the alarm was raised. “Then some instructors pulled the lifeguard off the stand and rushed down to help.”
New Smyrna Beach sits just south of Daytona and earns the nickname “Shark Bite Capital of the World” from surfers and locals, a title both WESH and The Daytona Beach News-Journal often repeat.
Less than two weeks before the planned attack on July 18, Matthew Bender caught headlines after a shark bit him while he was surfing in Florida, FOX 35 reported.
“I felt it clamp down like a bear trap out of nowhere,” Bender recalled according to “PEOPLE”. The incident happened on July 6. “By the time I looked down, it was already gone. It felt like electricity and like extreme pressure.”
“And then I think it shook its head. I definitely felt that as it was letting go,” he said. “It was also fast.”
Volusia County has logged 359 unprovoked shark bites since 1882, more than any other flower state’s county, the International Shark Attack File notes. Brevard County sits in second place with 159 cases.
Volusia’s mix of warm water, plenty of fish, and large crowds makes the area “conducive” to bites, Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, told The Daytona Beach News-Journal.
“You need a lot of hungry sharks in one spot at the same time, and the water has to be rich in nutrients,” Naylor told the paper in 2024, breaking down why bites happen.
While experts still dont know which exact shark bit people off Volusia County this summer, Naylor pointed out that blacktip sharks account for most local attacks year after year.
Blacktip and nearby spinner sharks, as Naylor explained to The Daytona Beach News-Journal, chase fish almost exclusively, so a nibble on a swimmer usually ends when the person thrashes and the bite victim pulls away.
In contrast, he added, “a bull shark or a tiger shark might stick around longer, and the wounds would be much more severe.”
