Seychelles: a young Frenchman seriously injured in the foot by a shark

Arthur, a 6-year-old French boy, was the victim of a serious shark attack in the Seychelles on March 2, reports the parisian. En vacances avec sa sœur aînée et leurs parents de él dans l’achipel de l’océan Indien, il a été pris pour cible alors qu’il se trouvait à seulement 1 mètre du bord sur l’île privée de Grande Sœur, où la famille réalisait an excursion.

That day, the morning passed without incident, busy observing the seabed, particularly rich in the region. It was in the early afternoon, when young Arthur was alone in the water near the beach, that a lemon shark pounced on his foot and bit him severely.

“There was a lot of blood in the water around him,” recalls the Parisian his father Jean-Florent.

four torn tendons

Before returning to the ocean, the shark notably tore four tendons from the boy. Arthur is urgently repatriated to a first island, before being sent to a hospital in Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles. There, a surgeon works to reconstruct his foot, particularly pulling the skin off of it.

As the University of Florida website reports, lemon sharks are “generally not considered a threat to humans.” But although they are rare, attacks from them have already been documented.

In Florida and the Caribbean, there have been 10 recorded unprovoked attacks by lemon sharks, none of which resulted in the death of the victim.

“The lemon shark is found near the coast, close to bathers, surfers and divers. Although the number of attacks attributed to this species remains low, caution is advised as it is a highly predatory species,” the University of Florida continues.

57 attacks in 2022

Since then, the young Arthur has been followed at the Necker hospital in Paris, and his bandage is changed every two days, he reports. the parisian. He will have to wait two and a half months before he can walk again.

In 2022, researchers at the University of Florida identified 57 shark attacks worldwide, including five deaths.

Last February, in New Caledonia, an Australian tourist died after a shark attack. Last summer, a 10-year-old boy had his leg amputated in Florida after he was attacked by a shark.