Photo: KTVU // YouTube
A surfer may have been bitten by a shark at Linda Mar Beach in Pacifica, California on Friday. While surfing just north of the bathhouse, a man was bitten in the leg by an unidentified animal. Shortly afterwards, medical responders arrived and transported him to a local hospital. If this is indeed a shark bite, this would be the second incident in the Bay Area in two weeks.
Fire officials and medical responders were dispatched to Linda Mar shortly before 4 p.m. with a report that a surfer was bitten by a shark, according to KTVU. Officers arrived to find a 52-year-old man with an injury to his lower leg. He told police he had been surfing when something bit his leg, but could not confirm if it was a shark. He was transported to a local hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.
Evan Barbarick was also surfing at the beach and witnessed the incident. “So my friend and I were surfing next to the guy that got attacked. He basically mentioned something along the lines of, ‘Hey, I got bit,’ and was sort of struggling in the water. My friend asked him if there was a bad bite and he said yes,” Barbarick told KTVU. “Then we were all able to get on our boards and get out of there and, when we got back, he had a pretty good-looking bite around the side of his leg.”
The incident comes on the heels of a tragic Bay Area shark encounter that took place earlier this month. Two weeks ago, kite surfer Felix Louis N’jai went missing after friends witnessed him being attacked by a shark at Point Reyes. An extensive search found no signs of N’jai, leading National Park Service officials to announce he was presumed dead. Marin County Fire Department senior captain Ben Ghisletta told media that to his knowledge, the incident “could be the first fatal shark attack (in the Marin County area).”
