Photo: Dan Cutler // Unsplash
A man was bitten by a shark while attempting to swim across the Catalina Channel. As Fox 11 reports, the incident occurred early Tuesday morning in Doctor’s Cove, off the coast of Catalina Island.
The 54-year-old man was attempting the Catalina Channel swim. The 20-mile journey goes from Catalina Island to the mainland and is considered one of the most prestigious long-distance swims in the world.
Marathon swims often begin at night, to take advantage of calmer conditions, and at 1:20 a.m., the man received a shark bite to his left foot. Los Angeles Fire Department boat pilot Shaun Corby, told Fox 11 that he believed the cause to be a juvenile great white about three to four feet long that “just nipped at his leg, his foot. And then took off.”
As part of the attempt, the swimmer was being followed by a boat – a live-aboard scuba diving boat named Bottom Scratcher. As soon as the man was bitten, he was brought aboard. The Bottom Scratcher met with the LAFD midway across the channel, where they transferred the swimmer to the LAFD boat to be taken to the mainland. From there, he was taken by ambulance to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
“Obviously, this is a super rare thing,” added Corby. “I don’t know what the underlying circumstances were, but it’s minimal out here.”
