It's not exactly what you expect to occur when you decide to cool down with a quick dip after fishing with friends. But when 45-year-old Don White jumped in the water after a long day of fishing, he soon realized he was sharing the water with an unwelcoming creature.
WISTV reports that Don said, "All of a sudden I felt severe pressure like a strike on my right foot."
White tells the "Today Show," "I said, guys, everybody out of the water, I think a shark bit me." White had been bitten by a bull shark. His son and cousin quickly helped him onto the boat and tied a belt around his leg. According to WISTV, White left a trail of blood in the water, and sharks swarmed around it.
White spend a night in the hospital and received 120 stitches.
A shark tooth was pulled from his leg, which White keeps. The "Today Show" says this tooth is "proof that this fish tale had real bite."
According to WAVY-TV 10, the attack happened about 13 miles off Beaufort Inlet, along the North Carolina coast. A witness named Emily told the news source, "It's scary to think that everybody is having so many shark attacks and everything."
In July, 6-year-old Lucy Mangum was bitten by a shark while riding her boogie board off North Carolina's Ocracoke Island.
Although the stories are scary, shark attacks are quite rare. Earlier this year, shark expert George Burgess told MSNBC that sharks kill about five people a year, and yet fishing fleets kill up to 70 million sharks a year. Burgess said, "The sea is actually very forgiving, certainly from the standpoint of the animal life ... When you look at the big picture, it’s kind of ironic that these animals which are apex predators, the top of the food chain in the sea, are so readily caught."
Shark finning has caused controversy around the U.S. and the world, and many shark species are threatened by overfishing. According to Oceana, some U.S. hammerhead populations have dropped by 98% in the past few decades.
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