Australian woman severely hurt in bull shark attack while swimming at Sydney Harbor
A woman in Australia was seriously injured Monday when she was attacked by a bull shark while swimming in Sydney Harbor, authorities said.
Emergency services were called to a private wharf in Elizabeth Bay and found the woman with “a serious injury” to her right leg, according to the Associated Press, citing a statement from police in the state of New South Wales.
The woman is now "in stable condition" at a nearby hospital following the attack, which occurred near the famed Opera House and Harbor Bridge, the Associated Press reported. The outlet added that police marine command was patrolling the area as a precaution.
USA TODAY left a message Wednesday with the police agency that was not immediately returned. Government officials with both the city of Sydney and the state of New South Wales did not immediately return USA TODAY's messages Wednesday morning.
Neighbors who heard cries of 'Shark!' ran to aid
Lauren O’Neill, 29, was identified as the victim who was attacked and bitten as she swam at dusk in the waters of Elizabeth Bay about a mile from the Sydney Opera House, New South Wales Minister for Agriculture Tara Moriarty told USA TODAY.
The attack occurred off the wharf about 60 feet from a jetty, according to reports that cited residents who witnessed the incident. Neighbors were quoted in the The Sydney Morning Herald saying they heard cries for help just before 8 p.m.
Michael Porter told the outlet that after hearing the cries, he looked out of his window and saw a severely injured O’Neill attempting to climb a wharf ladder. Her leg "was completely open and full of dark red blood,” Porter told the Herald.
Fiona Crago, a veterinarian who also lives in the area, told the Herald that she heard screams of “Shark attack! Shark attack!” that prompted her to run to the woman's aid. Crago applied a tourniquet to O’Neill's leg to stop the bleeding before paramedics arrived, media reported.
O’Neill was soon rushed to a local hospital and is now in a stable condition after undergoing surgery, 9News Australia reported Tuesday. Analysis of her wounds confirmed to experts that a bull shark was responsible for the attack, Moriarty said.
"Our thoughts are with the young woman, Lauren O’Neill, and her family," Moriarty said in a statement. “I would like to thank her neighbors, plus all the emergency service personal and health professionals who were involved in saving Ms O’Neill’s life."
Bull sharks are second in attacks behind great whites
Shark attacks are rare in Sydney Harbor, an area that is known to be a vital habitat for bull sharks and their young, Moriarty said.
Eight tagged bull sharks have been detected by shark listening stations off Sydney coastal beaches in the last week, while more than 87 bull sharks have been tagged by shark scientists in Sydney Harbor since 2009.
Bull sharks have been behind just six attacks in New South Wales since 2014.
Still, Australia is second only to the United States in shark attacks, reporting 261 as of June 2023 in the last 47 years. The U.S. tallied 720 shark attacks within the same timeframe, according to a past USA TODAY report citing data compiled by Floridapanhandle.com.
Bull sharks are thought to be responsible for the second-most bites behind white sharks, with 175 attacks and an 18% kill rate, the data showed.
But as the number of sharks in the world's oceans has decreased, so too have the odds of being attacked and killed by one. Estimates are that humans have a 1 in 3.7 million chance of being fatally mauled by a shark as a total of just 1,218 shark bites and attacks worldwide have been recorded in the past 47 years, with 14% of them deadly.
Contributing: The Associated Press
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bull shark attack in Sydney Harbor injures Australian woman
