A 12-year-old American boy was taken to the hospital in New Providence, Bahamas, following a shark attack on Tuesday afternoon. The incident occurred around 3:30 p.m. in the Exuma Cays area, a location frequented by tourists for swimming and scuba diving.
Royal Bahamas Police confirmed the attack, which took place in front of the boy's family. The extent of his injuries was not immediately clear, but he was reported to be in stable condition upon transport to the hospital.
The Exuma Cays have previously been the site of shark encounters, including an incident in 2018 where an American boy was attacked by a nurse shark. The Bahamas, an archipelago of over 700 islands, has one of the world's higher rates of shark attacks, though encounters are generally rare. The last recorded shark attacks on Americans in the Bahamas occurred in February 2025, when Rileigh Decker, 20, and Summer Layman, 24, were injured in an attack in Bimini Bay.