The beach at Robert Moses State Park opened to swimmers 90 minutes late due to concerns about sharks on Tuesday, one day after two teens were bitten in possible shark encounters four miles apart on Fire Island.
At Robert Moses State Park, on the western end of Fire Island, officials spied a school of about 50 sharks swimming 200 yards from the beach early Tuesday morning, the State Office of Parks said.
The beach opened to swimming about 9:30 a.m., after an hour passed without a sighting, according to the Parks Office.
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A day earlier, a confirmed shark bite was reported at Fire Island’s Kismet Beach, and a possible shark bite was reported at Robert Moses State Park.
In Kismet, a small Fire Island community directly east of Robert Moses State Park, a shark nipped a 15-year-old surfer’s left heel and toes around 5:20 p.m. on Monday, according to the Suffolk County Police Department.
The teen, whose heel and toes remained intact, swam to shore and was later treated at Samaritan University Hospital in West Islip, the police department said.
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Earlier, around 1:45 p.m. on Monday, a 15-year-old girl swimming near Robert Moses’ Field 3 beach was nibbled by marine life, leaving her with three small puncture wounds on her left leg, the Parks Office said. She did not go to the hospital.
“We cannot definitively say what bit her,” said George Gorman, the regional director for New York State Parks on Long Island. Lifeguards and a drone operator could not see any sharks in the water, he said.
New York has not had a deadly shark attack in many decades. And shark attacks are typically accidents — big fish do not seem to relish the taste of human flesh.
But a wave of shark encounters rattled Long Islanders last summer, and prompted some to call the season the Summer of Sharks.
All told, eight shark bites were…
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