Blue Shark Attack
The bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas), sometimes called the "Lake Nicaragua shark" in Nicaragua and the "Zambezi shark" (informally "zambi") in Africa, is a requiem shark that is often found around the world in warm, shallow waters along rivers and coasts. It is well recognized for its hostile behavior and for existing in warm, shallow brackish and freshwater environments, including estuaries and rivers.
Bull sharks are able to survive in both fresh and salt water, and they can move very far up rivers. Approximately 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) from the coast, at Alton, Illinois, they have been observed traveling up the Mississippi River. But few encounters between people and sharks in freshwater have been documented. Bull sharks of a larger size are likely to be involved in most near-shore shark attacks, including many bites that are thought to have come from different species.
Bull sharks are known for their aggressive, erratic behavior, large, flat snouts, and stocky shapes. The Sundarbans or Ganges shark and the bull shark can be mistaken for each other in India. It is also known as the Zambezi River shark or just "zambi" in Africa. Due to its extensive range and varied habitats, this species is also known locally as the Ganges River shark, Fitzroy Creek whaler, van Rooyen's shark, Lake Nicaragua shark, river shark, freshwater whaler, estuary whaler, Swan River whaler, cub shark, and shovelnose shark, among many others.
Because the bull shark is diadromous, it can easily transition between fresh and salt water. Additionally, these fish are euryhaline species that can adapt to a variety of salinities. One of the few cartilaginous fishes known to inhabit freshwater ecosystems is the bull shark. Numerous euryhaline fish, which are not closely related to bull sharks, are bony fish like salmon and tilapia. This type of evolutionary discontinuity can be explained by evolutionary hypotheses, one of which is that the bull shark had a population bottleneck during the previous ice age. The genes for an osmoregulatory system may have been favored by this bottleneck, which may have separated the bull shark from the other members of the Elasmobranchii subclass.
After so many events caused by the blue shark now it's happening again, the 58-year-old was attacked while "on an independent shore excursion," a cruise company official told CBS news. He had been a passenger on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. According to police spokeswoman Chief Superintendent Chrislyn Skippings, the attack happened at 2 p.m. close to Green Cay in the northern Bahamas near Rose Island.
Attacks are uncommon, however they have been known to happen accidentally or out of curiosity. The woman's family members witnessed the assault alongside a tour guide. She was treated for upper body injuries at the hospital where she was brought after being dragged from the water, but she ultimately passed away from her wounds, Skippings said at a news conference. Other swimmers were immediately prohibited from the snorkeling area.
In a statement to the AP, Royal Caribbean International said that the passenger passed away after being admitted to a nearby hospital for treatment and that the firm is assisting their loved ones. With two documented incidents in 2019, one of them fatal, the Bahamas has seen the most of shark attacks in the Caribbean. A Southern California woman on vacation was attacked by three sharks in that event on Rose Island, which is about a half-mile from where the attack on Tuesday had place.
According to Michael Heithaus, a marine biologist at Florida International University in Miami, the high frequency of attacks in the Bahamas is probably related to the region's dense population of swimmers and healthy marine habitat. With the exception of bull sharks and tiger sharks, he claimed that the Bahamas are home to a range of shark species, the majority of which are unconcerned with humans.
But overall, he emphasized, shark attacks are still uncommon. According to the International Shark Attack File, there were 137 shark attacks worldwide last year, 73 of which were unprovoked.
