On Tuesday, July 4, the 47-year-old Brooklyn resident was swimming with friends off the coast of Long Island, about 20 yards from Fire Island, when she felt something bite her upper left thigh.
“I was screaming at my friends, ‘Something is biting me.’ I felt like I was in a trap and it got me,” Emag said at a news conference at Gulf Coast South Shore University Hospital on Thursday, July 20.
Luckily, she managed to get her hand inside the shark’s mouth and pry its jaw off her leg. Her friend helped her back to shore and lifeguards called 911.
“We came out of the water and I saw blood coming down,” she said.
Emag didn’t take a close look at the shark, but her friends estimated the creature was 4 to 5 feet long.
She was taken to South Shore University Hospital, becoming the second person to be treated for a shark bite that day after a 47-year-old man was bitten by a shark near the village of Kwag.
Doctors later removed the shark’s tooth from his hand.
For Emage, doctors rinsed her wound with water and used X-rays to make sure there were no foreign objects inside before sending her home with antibiotics. The wound does not require stitches.
“There were multiple wounds, so there were a lot of scrapes and lacerations,” Nadia Baranchuk, an emergency room doctor at South Bank University Hospital, told reporters.
“Due to the size of the shark’s jaw, the wound was extensive. By the time we saw her, she had stopped bleeding and hadn’t lost a lot.”
Balanchuk said Emag didn’t even ask for pain medication, which surprised her given the circumstances.
“I think her adrenaline might still be high,” she said.
The incidents mark the hospital’s first treatment of shark bites in five years, according to doctors.
“So it’s a fairly rare phenomenon,” said Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “For those of us who are now working in coastal hospitals, shark bites are always on the back of our minds.”
There have been 25 shark attacks on people in the U.S. so far this year, according to the website TrackingSharks.com. Five of them are on Long Island.
Emag has not returned to the sea since his injury. Asked if it would come back after the wound had fully healed, she said: “Maybe”.
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