GALVESTON, Texas — A shark bit a 5-year-old girl off Pirates Beach on Galveston Island Tuesday.
She suffered “significant tissue damage to a leg,” according to Galveston County Health District EMS, and is in stable condition at University of Texas Medical Branch.
Officials said the girl, who was not named, is from Kerrville, Texas, and is expected to be OK.
The Galveston EMS responded to the bite around 5:30 p.m. CT.
Pirates Beach is located on the west end of the island near Galveston Island State Park.
Tuesday's shark bite was the first in Galveston since October 2015 when a 13-year-old boy was bitten after he became surrounded by a school of fish while swimming about 25 yards offshore.
Some researchers say that as shark populations rebound, more people visit coastal areas and waters grow warmer as a result of climate change, the chances of encounters with the ocean predators will continue to increase over the next several decades.
There were 98 unprovoked human-shark encounters worldwide in 2015, an all-time high and an 11% increase over the previous record of 88 set in 2000, according to the International Shark Attack File, based at the University of Florida.
Contributing: Molly Murray, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal. Follow KHOU on Twitter: @KHOU
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