As temperatures hit Queens in the 90s, Rockaway’s beaches were closed Tuesday afternoon for swimming due to shark sightings, officials said, leaving only the boardwalk for those beachgoers on a hot day.
Although shark sightings and incidents led to closed the beach In the past, they were uncommon, says Janet Fash, who worked as a primary lifeguard at Rockaway Beach for about 31 years. She said she has personally noticed more of “sea life” at New York’s beaches in recent years.
“We’ve seen a lot of dolphins and we’ve seen whales and we’ve seen stingrays,” Ms Fash said. “You can see a lot more, and the water is 73 degrees now, so the warm water brings in the sharks too.”
If a beach is closed because of sharks, chances are people will see the shark near the shore and the shark swimming in shallow water, Fash said.
In the past week alone, there have been several sightings of sharks on Long Island beaches, with one on Sundays at Lido . Beach, PIX11 reported. There were also two shark attacks reported 11 hours apart on Wednesday, bringing the total number of shark encounters on Long Island to five in two weeks, according to The Long Island Press.
Earlier this month, a man may have been bitten by a shark while swimming at Jones Beach, also on Long Island, and officials stepped up patrols in response.
Sharks patrolling Long Island’s the coast also increased last year after sharks are seen more often eating fish near swimmers. But the experts said that there is no real evidence that shark populations have increased and that the dangers posed by sharks are minimal.
