A shark attacked and killed a US cruise ship passenger who was snorkeling in waters around the Bahamas on Monday, authorities said. The incident involved a 58-year-old woman from Pennsylvania and happened at a popular snorkeling spot near Green Cay in the northern Bahamas, police spokeswoman Chief Superintendent Chrislyn Skippings told The Associated Press. “It’s unfortunate,” he said. Skippings said the woman’s family identified it as a bull shark. The majority of shark attacks in the Caribbean have occurred in the Bahamas, with two reported in 2019, one fatal. That incident involved a vacationing Southern California woman who was attacked by three sharks near Rose Island, located just half a mile from where Tuesday’s attack occurred. In December 2020, a fatal shark attack was reported in the French Caribbean territory of St. Martin, the first such incident in that region. In total, at least 32 shark attacks have been reported in the Bahamas since 1749, followed by 13 attacks in Cuba during that time period, including one in 2019, according to the Florida-based International Shark Attack File. Michael Heithaus, a marine biologist at Florida International University in Miami, said in a telephone interview that the high number of attacks in the Bahamas is likely related to the fact that there are many people in the water in this area and that it has a strong marine ecosystem. He said the Bahamas has a variety of shark species, the majority of which pay no attention to humans, except bull sharks and tiger sharks. “They get very large and eat large prey,” Heithaus said, adding that sharks have incredible sensory systems and can be attracted to food, sounds and smells in the water. But overall, shark attacks remain rare, he said. Worldwide, there were 137 shark attacks last year, 73 of them unprovoked, according to the International Shark Attack File.
