Shark Attacks Surfer, 18, at Florida Beach Known as the 'Shark Bite Capital of the World' By Bailey Richards

An 18-year-old was surfing in a Florida city notorious for shark encounters when one sunk its teeth into his foot.

The unidentified teen — a surf instructor, according to local NBC affiliate WESH — was at New Smyrna Beach around 12 p.m. local time on Friday, July 18, when the encounter occurred, Tamra Malphurs, director of the Volusia County Beach Safety Ocean Rescue, told local outlet FOX 35. (The Daytona Beach News-Journal and local ABC affiliate WFTV also reported the news.)

After the shark bit his foot, the surf instructor was transported to a local hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, Malphurs told FOX 35. The surfer’s boss described the injury as “nasty,” according to WESH.

Volusia County Beach Safety Ocean Rescue did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment on Saturday, July 19.

According to an anonymous eyewitness, several first responders arrived on the scene of the attack, which marks the fourth shark encounter in Florida’s Volusia County so far this year, according to the county website.

Two emergency vehicles and a police car “came pretty quickly” after the surfer was bitten, the bystander told WESH. “And some of the instructors came and got the lifeguard on the stand here and down.”

New Smyrna Beach, a surfing hub south of Daytona Beach, is widely known as the “Shark Bite Capital of the World,” according to WESH and The Daytona Beach News-Journal.

Less than two weeks before the July 18 attack, a man identified as Matthew Bender was bitten by a shark while surfing in the Florida city, per FOX 35. 

“I felt it clamp down like a bear trap out of nowhere,” Bender told the outlet of the attack, which took place on July 6. “By the time I looked down, it was already gone. I never saw the shark, but it bit really forcefully. It felt like electricity and like extreme pressure.”

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“And then I think it shook its head. I definitely felt that as it was letting go,” added Bender. “ It was also fast.”

There have been 359 “unprovoked” shark attacks recorded in Volusia County since 1882, the most of any Florida county, according to the International Shark Attack File, the Florida Museum of Natural History’s database. The next highest is Brevard County, with 159.

Volusia County “is conducive toward shark bites” due to a “confluence of factors,” Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s Florida Program for Shark Research, previously told The Daytona Beach News-Journal.

“You need a bunch of sharks, and they need to be in the mood to bite things, and you need a bunch of people in the same area at the same time,” Naylor told the newspaper in 2024, explaining that there are also environmental factors, like the nutrients in the area.

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Though the species of shark behind the recent Volusia County bites is unknown, blacktip sharks are responsible for most of the bites in the region, according to Naylor.

Sharks like blacktips and spinner sharks, which are also found in the area, “are highly piscivorous,” the evolutionary biologist told The Daytona Beach News-Journal, detailing that their diet typically consists of fish, so when they bite a person, the injured individual’s reaction scares them away.

“If they were bull sharks or tiger sharks,” Naylor said, “they might stick around a little bit more, and the injuries would be a lot worse.”