Videographer Bitten By Shark He Was Filming

A videographer with a passion for filming sharks found out the hard way recently just how close is too close for comfort.

Mark Rackley was on location in the Big Pine Key area, about 300 yards into the ocean, when a blue shark he was filming lashed out and bit him on the left arm.

“I’ve never seen a blue shark in the Keys before,” Rackley told the Florida Keys Keynoter. He estimates the creature was about 8 feet long.

Rackley, 48, grabbed the shark, which let him go. Rackley was subsequently rushed to a local hospital. He received 58 stitches on his shoulder and bicep, but is expected to make a full recovery.

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• Watch: Shark Swims Up to Man’s Backyard
• Great White Attacks Fishing Boat

“As Mark puts it ‘he entered her strike zone one too many times’ during the half an hour he was filming her,” a post on Mark Rackley Productions Facebook page reads. “He ended up with a pretty deep bite but remarkably he just missed his major tissues and arteries. I guess she no longer wanted to have her picture taken, understandable.”

Rackley anticipates he’ll have a pretty “nasty scar,” but intends to return to underwater filming as soon as he can, the post continued.

Blue sharks are rare in Florida, where the state lists its most common species as blacktip, bonnethead, bull, hammerhead, lemon, nurse and tiger. The Florida Museum of Natural History notes that in the “tropics the blue shark tends to seek deeper waters with cooler temperatures,” making Rackley’s encounter even more of a rarity.

Even so, Rackley insists the critter he filmed was indeed a blue.

While blue shark sightings are rare, shark encounters are not uncommon in Florida waters. Florida leads the nation in shark attacks.

On Sunday, a 60-year-old man was bitten by a shark while standing in 2 feet of water. That attack occurred on the west coast’s Marco Island. The state logged 28 bites in 2014 alone. Volusia County witnessed 10 of those attacks.

To learn more about the sharks that call Florida’s waters home, visit the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission online.

Photos from the Mark Rackley Productions’ Facebook page

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