Pennsylvania woman killed by shark in Bahamas
The last fatal shark attack in the Bahamas occurred in 2019.
A Pennsylvania woman on a Caribbean cruise with her family was killed by a shark while snorkeling in the Bahamas.
The Erie Times-News identified the victim as 58-year-old Caroline DiPlacido, an employee of Gannon University who lived in Millcreek Township, Erie County.
According to a news release from the Royal Bahamas Police Force, DiPlacido and her family were snorkeling in the waters northwest of Rose Island on Tuesday when she was attacked by the shark. DiPlacido was on a Harmony of the Seas cruise and had booked a private snorkeling excursion in the Bahamas.
Bull and tiger sharks are two of the more dangerous species in the world and both are found in the Bahamas.
DiPlacido, according to police, received “serious injuries to the left side of her body.”
“It’s unfortunate,” a police spokeswoman, Chief Superintendent Chrislyn Skippings, told the Associated Press.
Skippings told the AP that the woman’s family said she was attacked by a bull shark.
Bull and tiger sharks are two of the more dangerous species in the world and both are found in the Bahamas. According to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File, bull sharks have been responsible for 26 fatal, unprovoked attacks worldwide since the organization began keeping records. It’s unclear if DiPlacido’s death was among them. The shark attack file lists 32 unprovoked attacks, total, in the Bahamas since the earliest record in 1749.
Bull sharks often swim north to New Jersey and some researchers believe the species is responsible for a series of attacks there in 1916. Five attacks occurred in a 70-mile radius in less than two weeks. Four people died.
Those attacks were an inspiration for the novel Jaws.