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A 38-year-old French woman died on the small Caribbean island of San Martín, located approximately 240 kilometers east of Puerto Rico, due to a shark attack, an unusual incident and no mortality records in that Caribbean territory.
Local media detailed this Friday that the authorities of the French part of Saint Martin, a small territory that does not reach the 90 square kilometers shared by France and the Netherlands, assure that there is no previous data of this type of shark attacks, at least since official records are followed.
The woman died after the shark tore off her leg very close to the coast, specifically at a point known as Orient Bay, in the northeast of San Martín.
Local media indicate that there was a shark attack in San Martín in 2005, but that it was not fatal. The number of attacks throughout the Caribbean region in recent years has not exceeded thirty, of which only four were fatal.
In the region, although not exactly the Caribbean, incidents of this type stand out in the Atlantic archipelago of the Bahamas, where in particular there was a fatal event last year.
The island of Cuba was also the scene of a shark attack in 2019, a fact also considered exceptional.
Shark experts point out that most attacks on people are accidental. According to the 2019 annual report of the ISAF (International Shark Attack File), of the University of Florida, a total of 140 incidents between sharks and people were recorded that year.
The institution noted that there were a total of 64 unprovoked attacks that year, two less than in 2018.
The term unprovoked attack means that this type of aggression by sharks to people occurs in the natural habitat of those animals and without human provocation.
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