A Santa Rosa man is recovering Thursday after being bitten by a shark while he was vacationing in Miami on Wednesday.
A blacktip shark caused an 8-inch laceration below Mark Bowden’s knee, and he said it wasn’t until he was in the ambulance that he learned about warning signs that should have tipped him off.
“So, I wasn’t aware of the flags,” Bowden said. “I was never warned that it wasn’t a good time to go in the water, that it was feeding season. I was never warned about any of that. I’m just a tourist from California. Later, in the ambulance I heard my paramedic say, ‘Oh yeah, I won’t go out in the water when there’s a lot of fish.’”
Bowden will be back in California Friday. His advice for people heading into the water is not to go in if you see schools of fish swimming around – those fish are bait for sharks.
