Shawn Donnelly was paddling hard under a placid blue July morning sky, drifting over murky waters about 40 feet off the sandy Fire Island shore, when something slippery took a chunk of his surfboard and sent him flying.
A wicked wind the day before had whipped up dirt from the dunes at Smith Point park, and the sand crystals were still settling in the 6-feet deep waters, adding a brown tint to the waves and limiting visibility.
Donnelly, a Long Island lawyer and avid surfer, had ridden the waves at Smith Point for 30 years and had never seen a hint of a shark fin.
But on this day last July, a spotted 5-foot sand tiger shark was swimming beneath him. Without warning, Donnelly’s accidental antagonist took a 5-inch chomp out of his Mini Driver board and sent his 200-pound frame splashing into the water, he recalled.
He slapped at the powerful fish, and it darted away.
A rattled Donnelly rode a wave back to shore, where he looked down and saw blood running out of his calf. One of the shark’s teeth had carved an inch-long gash in his leg, as if it had been filleted with a steak knife.
“I was like, I can’t believe that just [expletive] happened,” Donnelly, 42, recalled recently. “No way that happened. It’s not possible. I’ve surfed my whole life, and I grew up surfing there in the same spot.”
Donnelly received help at a nearby park office, and rangers called an ambulance. He was OK, and has continued to surf.
But the incident was just one in a startling string of shark bites on Long Island last summer that scared swimmers, prodded political leaders into action and drew national headlines. Some declared it the Summer of Sharks.
Now, as New York wades into another beach season, municipal and state officials are dramatically escalating their shark surveillance efforts, hoping to keep swimmers safe — and, at least, deliver a sense of security.
Authorities are deploying new and advanced drones and water crafts, and expanding shark training for lifeguards. On Friday, Gov. Hochul issued a statement saying that it is “vital New Yorkers stay alert for sharks and remember water safety best practices.”
New York State has added 10 new drones to its shark surveillance program, more than doubling the drone tally, and reserved two new Yamaha WaveRunners for the lifeguard patrols at Jones Beach and Robert Moses State Park on Fire Island, Hochul’s office said.
Last summer, eight shark bites were recorded on Long Island, according to the State Office of Parks, an extraordinary surge for a region that virtually never logged shark encounters before the last few years.
Globally, 57 shark bites were reported last year, according to data compiled by the University of Florida. New York accounted for one in seven.
About 10 hours after Donnelly’s shark encounter on July 13, a swimmer was bitten by a shark 17 miles west on the beaches in the Fire Island community of Seaview and emerged from the waters bleeding heavily.
The victim, a 49-year-old Arizona man, was transported by helicopter from the Seaview baseball diamond. He recovered, but needed some 60 stitches, said Thomas Ruskin, the Seaview Association president.
“Last summer, our lifeguards were blowing people out of the ocean, it seemed like every day,” Ruskin said of Seaview shark sightings. “As a kid, I would have found it hard to believe.”
The sharks keep coming. Last weekend, a possible shark attack that caused six stitches was reported in Stone Harbor, N.J., an extremely rare incident for New York’s southern neighbor.
Unlike some beach vacation destinations, like Cape Cod in Massachusetts, New York has not had a deadly shark attack in many decades.
And the mighty, seal-chasing great white sharks that have caused chaos and closures on Cape Cod beaches in recent years have not seemed as present at New York beaches. (A dead great white shark did wash up on a beach in Southampton last summer.)
Still, enormous schools of baitfish are drawing all sorts of sharks closer to the shores, where swimmers and surfers play. And each year there are more sharks in the warming shallow waters off Long Island, said Chris Stefanou, a 27-year-old fisherman and conservationist who tags sharks.
The spike in sharks is itself a success story, the product of cleaner waters, according to experts. And the big fish — blue sharks, spinner sharks, sandbar sharks, hammerheads and more — are not hunting humans as they trawl Long Island’s shores for small snacks.
“We’re not on their menu,” said Stefanou, a showman who posts pictures of his shark catches on Instagram. “You never hear of a shark completely finishing a human. Actually, these sharks are accidentally biting.”
He said swimmers should not be scared, but added: “We’re swimming in their ocean, so we just have to be cautious.”
Some scientists have rejected the phrase “shark attack,” preferring softer language, and accused the media of sensationalizing the infrequent encounters.
But officials and political leaders understand their communities’ concerns, and have taken aggressive steps to keep beachgoers safe.
The state’s 10 new drones have more surveillance power and can better navigate winds than their precursors. One drone can drop flotation devices to the water, said George Gorman, the regional director for New York State Parks on Long Island.
The state is also expanding its ranks of drone-trained guards who will conduct regular patrols of the Long Island beachfront from 21 to 33, Gorman said, as officials “transition to the new normal.”
Sightings will be reported to the Long Island Coastal Awareness Group, whose 200-strong membership includes municipalities, beach operators and government agencies across Long Island, the governor’s office said.
The two counties that stretch across Long Island east of New York City — suburban Nassau and Suffolk farther east — are also taking precautions.
Nassau County will watch over its beaches with patrols by one or two choppers at a time and drone surveillance, said County Executive Bruce Blakeman. He stressed that the waters are safe and that he swims in the ocean three or four times a week.
“We’ll have plenty of drones up in the air,” Blakeman said. “We’ll have plenty of ATV vehicles on the beach. We’ll have boats in the water. We’ll have helicopters in the sky.”
In Suffolk County, lifeguards will sweep the shore on waveskis and paddle boards, and deploy drones where necessary, according to the office of County Executive Steve Bellone.
Towns are chipping in too. Hempstead, which includes Jones Beach, has invested in Jet Ski patrols and will fly drones Us.Mistertruth, said Town Supervisor Donald Clavin, after the town logged more shark sightings in the last two years than in the previous 40.
Hempstead lifeguards will intensify their sweeps, Clavin said, so that “swimmers can be more concerned about a sunburn than a shark bite.”
Officials at all levels have asked swimmers to do their part: staying near lifeguards and avoiding murky and fish-filled waters. The governor’s office has urged beachgoers to skip swims at dawn and dusk.
On Thursday, Donnelly was back in the water, surfing the waves near his Mastic Beach home.
He said he did not think the average beachgoer should fret about the sharks. But he agreed that swimmers should keep certain precautions in mind.
“It’s definitely sketchy at dusk and at night. It’s really just dangerous all around,” Donnelly said. “For most people, I don’t think it’s a real risk, because they’re not in harm’s way long enough.”
“But when you go into the ocean,” he added, “it’s like stepping into the jungle.”