A US teenage scuba diver has lost her leg following a shark encounter in the Caribbean Sea off Belize.
Annabelle Carlson, 15, from Aspen, Colorado, was on holiday with her family. She had been on a boat-diving trip with the Belize Pro dive-centre, sampling Lighthouse Reef near Half Moon Caye on the morning of 6 August.
Carlson had removed her dive-gear and re-entered the water for a swim when the shark went for her right leg. The tour guides recovered her from the water and took her to a Belize Coast Guard base, where paramedics succeeded in stabilising her so that she could be airlifted by helicopter to a medical centre in Belize City.
“The quick action from the emergency response team in Belize saved her life,” says family friend Aja Jewell, who has started a GoFundMe campaign to cover Carlson’s medical care. She described the odds against such an incident happening as “one in 11.5 million”.
The schoolgirl has now been flown back to the USA for treatment at a specialist trauma centre. “Annabelle will have a very long road of recovery ahead of her,” says Jewell.
Sharks in the area tend to be Caribbean reef sharks, which tend to be non-aggressive. “This is a very rare case,” Belize’s Minister of the Blue Economy Andre Perez told TV station Channel 5. “While we are saddened about it, we look at the facts.
“For the past 30 years as such, we have never had this type of accident as such. I believe there’s nothing to be worried about… we’re safe.”
