A Boston woman who was a tourist was killed by a shark on Monday in the Bahamas while she was paddleboarding, the police confirmed to reporters.
The victim who has been identified as 44-year-old Lauren Erickson Van Wart of Massachusetts, was attacked where the capital, Nassau, is located, just slighter than a mile off the western end of New Providence Island. She was with a man paddleboarding according to police but luckily the man was not injured.
according to the police, the lifeguard saved both individuals with the boat upon witnessing what was happening. The victim suffered severe injuries to the right side of her body, she was declared dead at the scene regardless of CPR efforts. it was not instantly transparent what sort of shark attacked Lauren. Police did not respond to that comment.
There have been shark-related fatalities noted in the past five years in the Bahamas according to Gavin Naylor, the program director of the International Shark Attack File in Florida.
He made that statement in an interview, adding that there is a massive tourist population in the Bahamas, and there are plenty of visitors who desire to view sharks from boats or even dive with them. sharks get adapted, and creatures are less alert than they otherwise might be, he added.
According to Naylor, 30 to 40 sharks live around the Bahamas, although the bull shark, black tip shark, and Caribbean reef shark hold the most elevated bite frequency. Normally it’s the unexpected bite, and they believe it is something else, he said.
Fatal shark attacks are infrequent, with just an average of 5 to 6 registered worldwide annually. The majority of them happening in Australia, Naylor said,
There were fifty-seven unprovoked bites last year around the world, the bulk of them in the U.S., according to the International Shark Attack File.
Since 1580, 33 unprovoked shark attacks have been registered in the Bahamas, according to the file the island is ranking the ninth globe.
According to sources one of them being the Nassau Guardian newspaper the German woman who went missing last month after being attacked while diving is still being searched by authorities.