Sign warning South African beachgoers about the presence of sharks | Image: ChrisDHDR
Two back-to-back shark attacks made the news recently in North Carolina when a twelve year old and a sixteen year old lost their arms in incidents approximately an hour apart. A ten year old was also attacked recently off of Daytona Beach. Experts say such occurrences are common at this time of year in the Carolinas and in Florida, when the amount of bait and game fish is peaking. Luckily in those cases, no one was killed.
Of course, not all shark attacks are particularly explainable or leave the victim alive. After all, nature is wild and unpredictable. One dramatic and terrifying fatal shark attack took place in South Africa in 2010. A man named Lloyd Skinner was standing in waist-deep water off of Fish Hoek beach in Cape Town when what one onlooker described as a "huge... like dinosaur huge" shark swam up from behind him and snatched him up in his jaws before swallowing him whole. One witness who called the shark "longer than a minibus" said,
"It was this giant shadow heading to something colorful. Then it sort of came out the water and took this colorful lump and went off with it. You could see its whole jaw wrap around the thing which turned out to be a person."
Read more about this incident and other instances of fatal shark attacks here.