A person swimming at Jones Seaside on Lengthy Island on Thursday might have been bitten by a shark, in response to the Nassau County Police Division.

The 57-year-old man was swimming within the ocean round 1 p.m. when he “sustained a laceration to his proper foot,” the Nassau police stated in a information launch on Friday.

Medics who handled the person’s harm recognized it as a attainable shark chunk. Nassau County officers stated they’d improve patrols in any respect county seashores by means of Fourth of July weekend.

Final 12 months, after a number of shark sightings alongside Jones Seaside and Lido Seaside, officers briefly closed a number of seashores and started boat patrols alongside the shoreline.

Assaults are exceedingly uncommon within the space and many consultants say patrols do little greater than gasoline unwarranted worry of sharks. Scientists say the rationale it might seem to be extra sharks are being noticed is as a result of extra individuals are in search of them.

Hans Walters, a subject scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium, stated there isn’t any actual proof that native shark populations have elevated lately. He known as the risk that sharks pose to individuals on New York seashores “very overblown.”

At a information convention on Friday morning at Nickerson Seaside, west of Jones Seaside, the Nassau County govt, Bruce Blakeman, was imprecise on particulars of the report concerning the potential assault.

“I imagine it was on his leg,” he instructed reporters, including that “there was no clarification as to how he obtained his accidents.”

The surgeons who handled the person “thought it appeared like a fish chunk, in all probability a shark chunk,” Mr. Blakeman stated.

As as to whether the harm was brought on by a shark, he stated, “It’s not 100 p.c nevertheless it was a degree of concern.”

With a police boat monitoring the ocean behind him, Mr. Blakeman introduced that the county police can be growing patrols this summer time, each by boat and by helicopter, with hourly runs alongside the shoreline.

The county would additionally conduct monitoring by drone over ocean swimmers, he stated, “to ensure we now have image of what’s happening.”

“We wish to stress to everyone that it’s secure to go within the ocean,” he stated, including that bathers ought to at all times swim with associates and with a lifeguard current.

A spokesman for the State Parks Division, which runs Jones Seaside, referred calls to the county police and a hospital spokeswoman stated no data was obtainable on the affected person.

Alongside the Jones Seaside boardwalk on Friday afernoon, Isabella Mejia, 20, a school pupil from Whitestone, Queens, recoiled upon listening to information concerning the attainable chunk.

“It’s loopy to assume that might occur right here,” she stated. “But it surely’s one thing that doesn’t occur usually, so it doesn’t actually terrify me. I’d nonetheless go within the water if there have been already lots of people in there.”