A 10-year-old boy from Maryland was bitten by a shark in the Bahamas on Monday, local police said.
The boy was bitten on the right leg by a shark during a “shark tank exploration” at a local resort on Paradise Island, the Royal Bahamas Police Force said in a statement.
The victim was taken to an area hospital and is listed in stable condition, police said.
Paradise Island is located just off the northern tip of New Providence and its capital, Nassau, in the Bahamas.
It is unclear what type of shark bit the young victim. (Getty Images/File)
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Police said the incident was under investigation but no other details were released, including what type of predator attacked the boy.
Police have not identified the resort, but Atlantis Paradise Island offers an on-site shark experience, according to the Associated Press. The resort did not immediately respond to the media's request for comment.
The attack comes just weeks after a 44-year-old Massachusetts woman was killed by a shark while paddleboarding in the Bahamas.
In late December, a 39-year-old man died after encountering a shark while surfing off the north coast of Maui.
A young boy was bitten on his right leg by a shark during a “shark tank exploration” at a resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. (Google Maps)
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Gavin Naylor, program director for the Florida International Shark Attack File, told The Associated Press last month that several shark-related fatalities have been reported in the Bahamas over the past five years.
He noted that there is a “huge” number of tourists in the Bahamas, adding that there are many people in the water and many tourists who want to see sharks from fishing boats or dive with them.
“So the sharks get used to their environment and the animals become a little less wary than normal,” he says.
Naylor said there are 30 to 40 species of sharks around the Bahamas, but Caribbean reef sharks, bull sharks, tiger sharks and blacktip sharks are the ones that cause the most bites.
Tiger shark in the Bahamas. (Reinhard Dirscherl/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
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“Usually it's an accidental bite. They think it's something else,” he said. “Sometimes they actually single out people, and it's very intentional.”
According to the website TrackingSharks.com, 83 shark bites were reported worldwide in 2023, 15 of which were fatal. According to the site, there were 41 shark bites in the United States last year, two of which were fatal.
Fox News Digital contacted the Bahamas Police Department for more information but did not receive a response.
Fox News' Pilar Arias and Bradford Betz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
