Wild footage reveals what lurks in NY surf — beachgoers may be swimming with sharks and not even realize
New Yorkers might be swimming with the sharks — and not even know it.
An intrepid Post photographer showed what’s lurking in the water near where a Queens woman was savagely bitten during a solo swim, revealing the ominous-looking sharks patrolling less than 200 yards from shore along Rockaway Beach.
Stefano Giovannini, who spear fishes during his free time, recently encountered several different species there, including five-foot sandtiger sharks, which can grow to as large as 10 1/2 feet and known to occasionally nip at humans.
“Coming face-to-face with the sandtiger shark was amazing,” said Milan-native Giovannini, 56, who said his toothy hosts paid him no mind as he snapped ‘fin’tastic footage of them.
“I would be nervous about a great white,” he admitted. “It’s always in the back of my mind because you know they see you before you see them.”
Great whites visit NYC waters — but experts warned that sand tigers shouldn’t be taken lightly, especially the young ones.
“Occasionally they make mistakes when visibility is poor and mistake someone’s foot for a baitfish,” explained Gavin Naylor, program director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, which maintains the International Shark Attack File.
He said the juvenile sand tigers — which measure three to four feet — are “abundant in the nurseries off the south coast of Long Island in shallow water and are likely the primary culprits for bites on humans in the surf zone,” such as last year and earlier this summer.
Giovannini, who shot the stunning images in June, also came face to face with dogfish sharks who don’t fuss with humans but are nonetheless a “small but mighty predator that isn’t afraid to take a jab at passing fish,” according to Oceana, a conservation organization. The grey to brown sharks have a pointed snout, and max out at around four feet.
Tatyana Koltunuk of Astoria was left “permanently disabled,” and missing 20-pounds of flesh, after the shocking Aug. 7 attack at Rockaway Beach, thought to be the first there since 1953.
Koltunyuk, 65, a former marine engineer originally from Ukraine, was swimming alone near Beach 59th Street at around 6 p.m. when the shark chomped down on her. Lifeguards rescued her, and quick-thinking cops applied a tourniquet to save her life.
Teeth marks indicated Koltunyuk may have been bitten by a bull or thresher shark — though a great white couldn’t be ruled out, a source familiar with the incident said at the time.
