A snorkeler was attacked by a shark in Florida this week, only to be rescued by his pregnant wife.
The Miami Herald [1] reported that 30 year-old Andrew Charles Eddy of Atlanta was bitten on the shoulder by what authorities believe was a bull shark while he was snorkeling with family on Sombrero Reef in the Middle Keys early Sunday morning.
As soon as Eddy was bit, his quick-thinking wife Margot Dukes-Eddy, who is pregnant, jumped into the water to rescue her husband without hesitating.
“Dukes saw the shark’s dorsal fin and then blood filling the water,” a deputy for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office wrote in the police report. “Dukes, without hesitation, dove into the water and pulled Eddy to the safety of the boat.”
Eddy and his wife had gone out that day on a 20-foot open motorboat with her parents, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend before the attack took place. Dukes-Eddy’s father, sister and her sister’s boyfriend before her husband jumped in, according to police.
Boaters who were on a vessel near the group said they had spotted a bull shark up to 9 nine feet that day. There has been a total of 17 unprovoked shark attacks since 1882 in Monroe County, according to the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File. [2] This is much less than Volusia County in northern Florida, which is also known as the “shark bite capital of the world,” as 312 shark attacks have taken place there in that same amount of time.
“It’s relatively uncommon,” George Burgess, the retired director of the International Shark Attack File, said of shark attacks. He went on to agree with the witnesses’ description that Eddy was most likely attacked by a bull shark rather than a tiger shark, as some have speculated.
“Bulls are regular inhabitants at that attack site, tigers less so, but still common,” Burgess explained.
Eddy’s condition is not known at this time, and his wife has yet to comment on the daring rescue. A spokeswoman for Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where Eddy was treated after the attack, said that his family has asked for privacy at this time.
This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com [3] and is used by permission.
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