An eight-year-old child suffered “a significant amount of blood loss” after he was bitten by a shark as he was snorkelling near Key Largo on Monday, authorities in Florida said.
The boy survived and was taken by helicopter to hospital in Miami for treatment to a leg wound above the knee. His condition was unknown on Tuesday morning, but local media reports described his wounds as “severe”.
According to the Monroe county sheriff’s office, the shark attack occurred on Monday afternoon as the boy was in the water near Horseshoe Reef. The type of shark was not established, but several species are prevalent in the Florida Keys, including bonnethead sharks, blacktip sharks and bull sharks, one of which bit a 37-year-old man as he was spearfishing near Key West in July 2024.
The Miami news outlet WSVN reported emergency dispatch communications about Monday’s incident, including an initial assessment from medical responders.
“So, we have an eight-year-old … significant amount of blood loss. Patient is pale,” one responder reported. “He’s been applied two tourniquets, we also put [on a] bandage to control the bleeding.”
Florida leads the US and the world in unprovoked shark bites, according to the international shark attack file maintained by the University of Florida’s museum of natural history. Of the 47 unprovoked bites recorded worldwide in 2024, 28 were in the US, with 14 of those occurring in Florida.
An analysis of shark bites between 1642 and 2024 – published recently by the website Tideschart – showed that incidents are still relatively rare. Eight Florida beaches appear in the top 10 in the US, with a combined 535 incidents over almost four centuries. New Smyrna Beach, the self-styled shark bite capital of the world, leads the list with 277.
Another monitoring website, trackingsharks.com, recorded 43 shark bite attacks globally in 2025 up to mid-August, with eight of them fatal, four in Australia. The most recently recorded shark death in the US was in June 2024, when actor Tamayo Perry, who appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean, was killed while he was surfing in Oahu.
