An Australia woman has been bitten on the foot by what is believed to be a shark while she was wading in shallow waters off the island of Phuket.
Jane Neame, from Queensland, Australia, who is also six months pregnant, had a tendon in her ankle severed and had surgery at the island’s Bangkok hospital after the attack on Tuesday, the Phuket Gazette reported.
Neame was rescued by her boyfriend, Robert Passmore, who carried her to the beach.
Dr Thorn Thamrongnavaswasdi, vice dean of the fishery faculty of Kasetsart University, posted in his Facebook page that after having seen the wound of the victim. From an image in the social media he agreed with the Marine and Coastal Resources Department’s opinion that the wound was inflicted by a shark.
Must have been a shark attack
He said that there was no other fish rather than a shark which could inflict such a wound and he suspected a bull shark which prowl about in shallow water. He pointed out that bull shark was one of the three shark species, great white shark and tiger shark, which were the most dangerous.
Shark attack is very rare in Thailand, said Dr Thorn, recalling an incident about a decade ago when a foreign tourist was attacked by a shark while swimming in the sea in Koh Pha-ngan. The victim later died from blood loss.
He went on saying that sharks attacked out of misunderstand and did not intend to eat human beings and there was no need to take revenge by hunting them down.
Ms Jane Neame, is currently hospitalized at Bangkok Phuket hospital for back and foot wounds.
She told reporters that she didn’t think she was attacked by a shark but anyhow thanked officials of the Ministry of Tourism and Sports for taking good care of her.