A brave 13-year-old girl named Ella Reed is on the mend after she courageously fought off a shark that attacked her at a Florida beach on Thursday. She was at Fort Pierce Beach, sitting in the shallow water next to a jetty when she suddenly felt a searing pain in her side and spotted the predator.
“The shark itself was so powerful. That was what I felt the most because it was hitting my stomach really hard,” she informed. She reported to have hit the bull shark, which was five to six feet long, causing it to briefly recede before approaching again.
The Florida native mentioned, “It wouldn’t leave me alone, so I had to use my arm and use my hand too, so it got my arm and my finger.”
The teenager yelled for her mother and brother who were at the beach with her as the water beast came closer to her again. “It was insane because she was totally covered in blood pretty much from head to toe so she couldn’t really see what went on. She was shaking, but she was calm,” noted her mother.
She was bitten on the top of her knee, arm, stomach, and finger and had to receive 19 stitches for her injuries.
“I was kinda in shock about everything that happened, so I wasn’t really in pain because the adrenaline was through the roof,” the teen girl remarked. She added that she is proud of her scars.
She asserted that she has never been frightened of the ocean and that she intends to return to the water following this incident. “It was clear water so you never really know when it’s going to happen,” she commented.
Florida is the shark bite capital of the world, according to the University of Florida’s international shark attack file. The region accounted for 16 of the 57 unprovoked shark bites documented in 2022. Shark attacks there led to two amputations last year.
The majority of unprovoked shark bites worldwide occurred in the US and Australia. Despite the fact that there were five fatal attacks in 2022, the statistics showed a decrease from 10 in 2020 and 9 in 2021.
“Generally speaking, the number of sharks in the world’s oceans has decreased, which may have contributed to recent lulls,” disclosed Gavin Naylor, of the Florida Museum of Natural History.