A surfer has reported being by bitten by a shark in Australia October 15.
Cooper Hallam was surfing around 32 feet (10m) from Kings Beach in Caloundra, Queensland when he was bitten on the left side of his waist.
As he was lying on his surfboard, the “shark hit me hard from the rear left side, felt it take 2 or 3 quick bites, before I could even react and thrash it off,” Hallam reported to Dorsal Shark Reports.
He said the shark was small and “couldn’t fit [its] jaws around my waist.”
Some have suggested the shark involved was a wobbegong. The normally docile sharks have been known to become territorial and have bitten scuba divers who come to close or attempt to touch them.
While wobbegong sharks can do significant damage to smaller appendages, they often leave only scratch type lacerations on larger parts of the human body.
There have been a total of 83 shark attack bites in 2016. Seven of which were fatal; 39 were reported in the U.S., with 28 occurring in Florida. Seventeen have occurred in Australia, three of which were fatal.
All locations have been marked on the 2016 shark attack bites tracking map.
