According to USA Today
A man suffered a shark bite in the waters off Siesta Key on Tuesday morning.
The Sarasota County Fire Department was called out to Siesta Key for a medical emergency Tuesday morning. One person was taken to Sarasota Memorial Hospital.
Hospital staff has confirmed that the injury was a shark bite, but was unable to provide any details, including the severity of the injury and the status of the victim, due to patient privacy regulations.
WTVT-TV in Tampa reported that a 39-year-old man had walked home despite bleeding profusely. A woman called 911 near his home and said the man had been bitten on his hand and arm and was “bleeding to death.”
She was heard reassuring him “everything’s going to be OK,” per the TV station.
According to the Florida Museum’s International Shark Attack File, there have only been seven unprovoked shark attacks recorded in Sarasota County in the past 138 years.
The majority of shark attacks on record have occurred on the east coast of Florida, . The museum says unprovoked attacks “are defined as incidents where an attack on a live human occurs in the shark’s natural habitat with no human provocation of the shark.”