Louisville vacationers, shark expert express shock at spate of weekend attacks in Florida

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — For anyone heading to the beach in Florida this summer, area first responders and wildlife experts are warning people to keep an eye out for sharks.

The warning came after a weekend in which three people were bitten, one of whom had to have part of his arm amputated. The attacks off beaches in the Florida Panhandle led authorities to temporarily close several beaches to swimmers on Friday. Beaches were reopened on Saturday, with flags warning of high risks.

“It’s rare, extremely rare, to have three victims in one day,” Walton County Sheriff Mike Adkinson said.

In Walton County, the sheriff’s office, fire department and state wildlife agency were working together to patrol the water with boats and the shoreline with vehicles, the Walton Fire District said Saturday. South Walton in an update. Both attacks Friday took place in Walton County, an area that stretches from Miramar Beach and Seaside to Seacrest and Rosemary Beach.

Red and purple flags were used Saturday to warn swimmers of the dangers.

“Purple flags indicate the presence of dangerous marine life and single red flags indicate high risk conditions,” the Bay County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post Saturday.

Small fish move in schools close to shore this time of year, which may have contributed to the attacks, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office said.

Area 30A of coastal Florida is a popular vacation destination for Kentuckians. Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport offers nonstop flights to nine Florida airports on five different airlines. Depending on the day, there are up to 11 departures from Louisville to cities in Florida.

Over the weekend, Kayla Least, Macey Potts and Cassidy Ratterman — all from Louisville — were present for a friend’s bachelorette party about 40 miles west of the site of the attacks.

“The locals made it seem like this was some kind of weird phenomenon and that it hadn’t happened in 15 years,” Least said Monday. “Even our captain thought it was really weird that this happened.”

The first attack occurred Friday afternoon when a woman was bitten by a shark near WaterSound Beach, the Walton County Sheriff’s Office said. She suffered serious injuries to her stomach and arm, and part of her arm had to be amputated, South Walton Fire Chief Ryan Crawford said at a news briefing. She was airlifted to a trauma center.

Less than two hours later, firefighters responded to another beach about four miles east of the first attack “following multiple reports of a teenager injured by a shark,” the sheriff’s office said. .

Two teenage girls were in waist-deep water with a group of friends when they were attacked, the South Walton Fire District said. Both teens are from Mountain Brook, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham, Mountain Brook City Manager Sam Gaston told the news site Al.com.

The time of the attacks – mid-afternoon – was also an anomaly, Adkinson said. Sheriff’s officers often warn people to watch out for sharks in the early morning and dusk, when they usually feed, he noted.

Matt Kolmann, a professor at the University of Louisville, has spent time researching sharks in Florida and agreed Friday’s attacks were rare.

“Usually most people, when they are attacked or bitten, it’s at dawn and dusk,” he said Monday. “That’s when the sharks…seem to be most present.”

Kolmann said sharks don’t seek out humans.

“Most shark attacks are not malicious,” he said. “Sharks didn’t really evolve to eat us, did they? And so I think a lot of the time it’s a case of mistaken identity.”

Walton County Sheriff’s deputies patrolling the waters in a boat on Saturday spotted a 14-foot hammerhead shark near Santa Rosa Beach, which they said is not unusual. Sheriff’s officials say they don’t know what type of shark attacked the swimmers Friday.

Shark attacks are rare, experts say. Last year, there were 69 unprovoked bites worldwide, and 10 of them were fatal, according to the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File. This is more than the recent average of six deaths per year.

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