Shark on hunt grazes surfer’s leg with its teeth, NC officials say. ‘Wild situation’

A shark that leaped out of the water while hunting a bait ball grazed a surfer’s leg with its teeth on its way back down, a North Carolina fire chief said.

The woman was surfing near the Surf City Ocean Pier just before 8 a.m. on Tuesday, July 19, when the shark jumped out of the water, Surf City Fire Chief Allen Wilson told McClatchy News.

The shark’s teeth cut her leg to the point where she may need stitches, but the wound was not considered a bite, he said.

“It was just those top teeth grazed her leg,” he said.

The woman declined to be taken to the hospital by ambulance and took herself there, Wilson said.

The animal was a spinner shark and measured about a foot long, he said.

Spinner sharks feed by “spinning out of the water in quick bursts of speed,” according to Oceana, an ocean conservation nonprofit. They generally hunt schools of small fish by swimming up through a bait ball with their mouths open. They can leap up to 20 feet into the air.

“They’re not aggressive at all,” Wilson said.

Surf City is about 100 miles northeast of Myrtle Beach. Wilson said most of the incidents involving sharks in the area are accidental encounters, such as people stepping on them or brushing up against their fins.

In the July 19 incident, the shark was not trying to attack the surfer; rather, the surfer was just, “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“It really is kind of a wild situation,” he said.

This story was originally published July 19, 2022 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Shark on hunt grazes surfer’s leg with its teeth, NC officials say. ‘Wild situation’."