The 57-year-old man was swimming in the ocean around 1 p.m. when he “suffered a laceration to his right leg,” Nassau police said in a news release Friday. Doctors who treated the man’s injury determined it to be a possible shark bite. Nassau County officials said they will increase patrols at all county beaches through the July 4th weekend. Last year, after several shark sightings along Jones Beach and Lido Beach, officials briefly closed several beaches and began boat patrols along the shoreline. Attacks are extremely rare in the area, and many experts say the patrols do little more than fuel unwarranted fear of sharks. Scientists say the reason it may seem like more sharks are being spotted is because more people are looking for them. Hans Walters, a field scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium, said there is no real evidence that local shark populations have increased in recent years. He called the threat posed by sharks to people on New York beaches “exaggerated.” At a news conference Friday morning in Nickerson Beach, west of Jones Beach, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman was vague about the details of the report of the possible attack. “I think it was in his leg,” he told reporters, adding that “there was no explanation as to how he got injured.” The surgeons who treated the man “thought it looked like a fish bite, probably a shark bite,” Mr Blakeman said. As for whether the injury was caused by a shark, he said, “It’s not 100 percent, but it was a level of concern.” With a police boat monitoring the ocean behind him, Mr Blakeman announced that county police would increase patrols this summer, both by boat and helicopter, with hourly runs along the coastline. The county will also conduct drone surveillance over ocean swimmers, he said, “to make sure we have a good picture of what’s going on.” “We want to stress to everyone that it’s safe to go in the ocean,” he said, adding that bathers should always swim with friends and a lifeguard. Messages left for a New York State Parks representative were not immediately returned, and a hospital spokeswoman did not immediately have information on the patient. Along the Jones Beach boardwalk on Friday afternoon, Isabella Mejia, 20, a college student from Whitestone, Queens, recoiled upon hearing news of the possible bite. “It’s crazy to think that would happen here,” he said. “But it’s something that doesn’t happen often, so it doesn’t really scare me. I would still go in the water if there were already a lot of people in there.”
