Colombia reported zero shark attacks off its coast in 2021, but that luck didn't extend very far into 2022. CBS News reports that an Italian tourist, identified by local media as 56-year-old Antonio Roseto Degli Abruzzi, was swimming Friday in the Caribbean, near a cliff off the island of San Andres, when he was fatally bitten by a shark. A senior Navy official confirmed Abruzzi's death in the snorkeling hot spot known as La Piscinita, with the Archipelago Press tweeting a video of the two tiger sharks it says was responsible for the attack.
"In the last two weeks, sharks have appeared in shallow waters north and south of San Andres," the outlet noted. Abruzzi, who was said to have been a good swimmer, is reported to have "lost a large chunk of his right thigh" and suffered severe blood loss after being bitten by one of the 8-foot-long creatures, per the Mirror, which adds that this is the first shark attack logged in that area. "People are very worried about what's happened, and they're not letting people go into the water," a local marine biologist says.
Swimmers have been advised to steer clear of La Piscinita waters for the next few days as a precaution, but local officials insist such an attack there is highly unusual, per El Pais. "This species is common in the Caribbean and tends to spend the daytime in deep waters and feed in shallow waters at night. ... However, it is rare to see them during the day," authorities said in a statement. The Mirror notes that the tiger shark is second only to the great white in terms of fatal attacks on humans, though those attacks are indeed not the norm. (More shark attack stories.)
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