Beachgoers hoping to escape a punishing heatwave in New York City were instead forced out of the water on Thursday, after a string of shark sightings prompted lifeguards to close Rockaway Beach at the height of the afternoon heat.
According to the New York Post, the city’s Parks Department raised red flags along the entire Queens coastline at around 11am, after multiple sightings of the animals, which officials described as aggressive. Sightings of sharks swimming in groups were reported roughly once an hour throughout the day, keeping the water off-limits for much of the afternoon just as real-feel temperatures climbed to around 105F. PIX11 reported that the closures came on what was forecast to be the hottest day of the heatwave, with the city expected to reach a high of at least 101F.
Under the Parks Department’s protocol, a single shark sighting triggers a one-hour closure of the water for a mile in either direction of the spot where it was seen; when multiple sharks are confirmed, the entire beach is shut, with the closure extended by a further hour for each additional sighting. Lifeguards and beach staff used drones to monitor the water throughout the day to determine when it would be safe to allow swimmers back in.
The closures in the Rockaways came just hours after a 9-foot shark was spotted some 15 miles east at Point Lookout in Nassau County, prompting a similar red-flag closure there, according to ABC7 New York.
Thursday’s sightings are consistent with a pattern the city’s beaches have seen build in recent years. According to the New York Post, bull sharks — the species also blamed for an attack on a woman swimming off Beach 59th Street in August 2023, although officials say a thresher or great white could not be ruled out — tend to appear along the coast between the Rockaways and Montauk around the Fourth of July, as the water warms to temperatures the predators favour. The city has significantly expanded its use of drones to monitor for sharks since that 2023 attack, according to Gothamist, which reported that fire department drones alone spotted 11 sharks along city beaches last summer. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Kaz Daughtry has defended the precautionary closures despite criticism from some quarters that the sharks are simply in their natural habitat, saying swimmers deserve to know if a shark is nearby.
Shark bites remain rare. The Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File recorded 28 confirmed shark bites across the United States last year, one of them fatal. Even so, the frequency of sightings at Rockaway Beach in recent summers — and the disruption the resulting closures cause on the year’s busiest beach days — has become an increasingly familiar feature of the city’s Independence Day weekend.
