Shark Attacks in Cuba

Why Cuba's record is long, old and centred on Havana

Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, with roughly 5,700 kilometres of coast, and it sits at a crossroads of shark habitat. The Gulf Stream runs along its north-west shore within sight of Havana, the Old Bahama Channel and the Nicholas Channel bring deep water close to the north-central cays, and on the south-east the island drops into the Cayman Trench, the deepest water in the Caribbean. Inside those edges are vast, lightly developed shallows: the Jardines de la Reina, the Sabana-Camagüey archipelago, the Zapata swamp and hundreds of kilometres of mangrove. Decades of limited coastal development and restricted fishing have left Cuba with some of the healthiest shark populations in the region, from bull sharks in the lagoons to silky and Caribbean reef sharks on the outer walls.

The human half of the story is Havana. For three centuries the city was the busiest port in the Spanish Caribbean, and a port full of ships, fish waste and men who could not swim is exactly where the oldest shark records in the Americas come from. Nine of the 49 entries are set in Havana Harbor itself, and the earliest of them, from 1749, is the case that became famous: a swimmer whose right leg was severed at the knee and who, according to the record, went on to become Lord Mayor of London and to commission the painting "Watson and the Shark" from John Singleton Copley. Two of the other harbour deaths are as unusual as any in the database, a man on horseback in 1892 and a balloonist whose craft crashed into the water in 1893.

The record then moves to the beaches. As Havana grew westward into Vedado and Miramar in the 1920s and 1930s, bathing became fashionable, and in August 1931 three swimmers were killed in nine days; the note attached to the last of them says wire netting was installed at local beaches afterwards. The 1950s belong to the shark fishermen of Cojímar, the village east of the city where Hemingway kept his boat, and the recent decades to a different Cuba: resort swimmers on the Holguín coast and spearfishers along both ends of the island. In all, 14 entries are older than 1900, 35 are dated since, and the first record of the twenty-first century (a swimmer bitten off the Blau Costa Verde resort in January 2001) is separated from the last of the twentieth (1957) by more than forty years of silence.

Cuban places with recorded shark incidents

Eight groups of places account for the file. The first three are all within Havana Province, which holds 20 of the 49 entries.

• Havana HarborNine entries, five of them deaths, nearly all involving people who ended up in the water from ships. Besides the 1749 leg amputation, a bather lost a leg in 1846 and a man swimming to escape imprisonment in 1873 had both legs so badly bitten that they were amputated. A man riding a horse was killed in June 1892, a balloonist whose balloon crashed in the harbour was killed in May 1893, and men who fell overboard were killed in October 1903, September 1904 (one leg severed below the knee and the other above it, by a second shark) and July 1921. The 1895 entry, a shipwreck, is recorded as probable drowning followed by scavenging.
• Miramar, Vedado and Jaimanitas: Havana's bathing beachesIn July 1930 a swimmer at La Playa, Vedado, had his right arm and leg bitten and both were amputated. Then came August 1931: a swimmer killed at Miramar on the 23rd, with rescuers watching the shark try to drag him under by the leg; a swimmer killed a quarter of a mile offshore at the Miramar subdivision on the 25th; and a swimmer killed at the Vedado Baths on the 31st, after which wire netting went up at the local beaches. In May 1933 a person swimming to shore from a capsized sailboat off the Jaimanitas Yacht Club was killed.
• Cojímar and the Havana shark fisheryFive Cojímar entries, three fatal, and one more from Havana itself. A person who slipped from a rock into the water at Cojímar was killed in 1945. In 1955 a fisherman clubbing a hooked shark had his forearm slashed from wrist to elbow, and in an undated case filed as before 1957 a shark fisherman knocked overboard was bitten on the hip and killed; both count as provoked. In 1957 a 3.7 m shark struck a fishing boat without hurting anyone, a death at Cojímar the same year is queried in the file as accident or infanticide, and in Havana a man fishing for sharks became entangled in his line and was pulled beneath the surface.
• Guardalavaca and the Holguín coastThe modern hotspot: three entries and two deaths since 2001. A swimmer off the Blau Costa Verde resort had his left arm bitten by a 2 m shark in January 2001; a person bathing at night at Guardalavaca Beach was killed by a tiger shark on 4 November 2017; and another swimmer was killed at the same beach on 4 December 2019. These are the only fatal cases in the file involving resort swimmers.
• Guantánamo and Cape MaisíSix entries, none of them entered as fatal. Two spearfishers at Boquerón were injured on 12 August 1954 by a 58-inch nurse shark that one of their party had shot, and two more spearfishers were bitten on the leg by bull sharks at Guantánamo in January 2009. The other two lines are wartime and maritime: the Esso Bolivar, torpedoed and shelled by U-126 south-east of Guantánamo Bay in March 1942 with the loss of eight of her fifty crew, and two boys from the Danish ship Grete Maersk who went into the water off Cape Maisí in December 1948; after two hours a shark bit and killed one, while the other washed ashore alive.
• Santiago de CubaA swimmer was killed at Santiago in July 1898, and in a second 1898 case off the city 13 men were in the water after their sailboat sank and 6 were taken by sharks. The one modern entry is from Uvero, west of the city, where a swimmer's left foot was severed by a 3 m shark on 20 January 2005.
• Nuevitas, Caibarién, Remedios and Santa Lucía (north-central coast)Five entries, four of them deaths from small boats. A boat from the ship Josephine capsized in a squall at Remedios in June 1867; at Nuevitas Harbor in 1898 four men were killed by sharks while trying to swim ashore and one survived; at Caibarién in August 1904 a captain and two sailors clinging to the hull of their capsized boat were pulled off by sharks; and a death is recorded off Nuevitas in December 1913. The only recent case is a diver at Santa Lucía, Camagüey, whose left forearm was bitten by a 2.5 m bull shark in October 2004.
• Matanzas, Cienfuegos and the western provincesMatanzas has two nineteenth-century deaths: a man sitting on the gunwale of a boat taken by a large shark in April 1839, and a man painting a ship in 1867 who was pulled off his float and never recovered. At Cienfuegos in November 1929 a shark attacked a fishing boat, the fisherman jumped overboard, was bitten on the arm, killed the shark with a knife and later lost the arm. The two newest entries in the whole file are from the west: a fisherman's arm bitten at Playa Majana, Artemisa, on 25 March 2023, and a spearfisher killed by a bull shark at Puerto Escondido, Mayabeque, on 9 May 2023.

The complete Cuban record, all 49 entries

The figures, the decade chart and the table below come straight from the SharkSider database, which draws on the International Shark Attack File, the Global Shark Attack File and verified local reports and is updated weekly. Fatal entries are shown in red. Fourteen of the 49 entries are from before 1900; they appear in the collapsed decades at the foot of the table, while the chart begins at 1900.

• Recorded incidents49 (35 since 1900)
• Fatal26
• Years covered1749–2023
• Since 20009 incidents, 3 fatal
• Most common activitySwimming & wading
• Most identified sharkBull shark

The most recent incidents

• 9 May 2023 · Puerto Escondido, MayabequeSpearfishing — FatalShark: Bull shark · fatal
• 25 March 2023 · Playa Majana, ArtemisaFishing — Arm bittenShark not identified · not fatal
• 4 December 2019 · Guardalavaca Beach, HolquinSwimming — FatalShark not identified · fatal
• 4 November 2017 · Guardalavaca Beach, Holquin ProvinceNight bathing — FatalShark: Tiger shark · fatal
• 25 January 2009 · Guantanamo Bay, Guantanamo ProvinceSpearfishing — Severe lacerations to lower left legShark: Bull shark · not fatal
• January 2009 · Guantanamo, Guantanamo ProvinceSpearfishing — Lacerations to right calfShark: Bull shark · not fatal

Every recorded incident

Some guidance on reading the Cuban table. A number of rows are maritime disasters rather than attacks on swimmers: the foundering of HBM Magpie in 1826, the seaplane Columbus that ditched 20 miles from Havana in 1923 (the four who died probably drowned, though remains were recovered from a dusky shark), a hurricane entry from 1932 with no details, the torpedoing of the Esso Bolivar in 1942, and the sinking of the M.V. Tropical in the Yucatán Channel in 1957, whose sole survivor spent eight days on oil drums with sharks nearby but was never touched and whose entry is marked invalid. Four cases are provoked, all involving hooked or speared sharks at Boquerón and Cojímar. Several rows describe more than one victim but count as a single entry, notably the two multi-victim 1898 cases and the 1904 Caibarién capsizing. The 1948 Grete Maersk line is filed as non-fatal because it follows the boy who survived, even though the account records his companion's death, and the 1957 Cojímar death is queried in the file as either an accident or an infanticide. Where a species or size appears, it is what witnesses reported.

The sharks behind Cuba's incidents

Bull shark. The species named most often in the Cuban file and the one behind its most recent death. A 2.5 m bull shark bit a diver at Santa Lucía in 2004, bull sharks bit two spearfishers at Guantánamo in January 2009, and a bull shark killed a spearfisher at Puerto Escondido in May 2023. Bull sharks live in Cuba's mangrove lagoons, river mouths and harbours, which is why they are also the likeliest, though unrecorded, culprit in the old Havana Harbor cases.

Tiger shark. Named once, in the death of a night bather at Guardalavaca in November 2017. Tiger sharks patrol the deep drop-offs of the north-east coast, and swimming after dark is the classic circumstance for an encounter.

Nurse shark. Both 1954 Boquerón injuries came from a single 58-inch, 34-pound nurse shark that had been speared, a species that bites only when handled or cornered.

Unidentified large sharks. The 3.7 m animal of the two 1957 Cojímar entries, the 3 m shark that severed a foot at Uvero in 2005, the 2 m shark at the Blau Costa Verde resort in 2001 and the "large shark" at Matanzas in 1839 were never identified. The 1923 seaplane entry names a dusky shark, but only as the animal from which remains were later recovered. Cuba's most abundant reef sharks, the Caribbean reef shark and the silky shark that divers meet at the Jardines de la Reina, do not appear anywhere in the file. The guide to the sharks of Cuba covers all of them.

Reading the Cuban record as a safety guide

The file is clear about which situations have hurt people in Cuban waters.

• Do not swim at night. The 2017 Guardalavaca death is the one modern resort fatality with a known circumstance, and it was a night bathe. Stay out of the water between dusk and dawn on the north-east coast.
• Spearfishers are the most exposed group today. Four of the 9 entries since 2000 involve spearfishing or diving, including the 2023 death. Fish on a float line, get the catch out of the water at once and surface with a partner.
• Keep close to shore. The 1931 Miramar victim who died a quarter of a mile out and the 2001 resort swimmer both illustrate the same point: distance from the beach is distance from help.
• Leave hooked and speared sharks alone. The Cojímar and Boquerón cases of the 1950s all began with a shark that had already been caught.
• Stay out of port and harbour water. Nine Havana Harbor entries, and a string of small-boat capsizings on the north coast, are a reminder that port water with fish waste and shipping is where Cuban sharks have historically found people.

Our page on how to survive a shark attack explains what to do if a shark approaches: stay upright and calm, keep it in view, move steadily towards the boat or the shore, and fight back at the eyes and gills only if it makes contact.

Cuba in the Caribbean and world picture

The International Shark Attack File confirms around 60 to 80 unprovoked bites a year worldwide, and Cuba contributes to that count only occasionally: 9 incidents in the whole period since 2000, against 89 in the Bahamas over the same years and 42 in Mexico. Jamaica, a much smaller island, has 8 since 2000 and a total of 32. What sets Cuba apart is the depth of its history, with 14 entries before 1900 and a fatality rate of more than half, a product of the harbour and shipwreck cases that fill the old decades. The nearest comparison is Florida, ninety miles across the strait, which has a fraction of Cuba's fatality rate and many times its number of bites, because Florida's incidents are mostly small blacktips nipping surfers rather than large sharks meeting people in harbour water. Every country and state is compared on the shark attacks overview.

Records from Cuba's neighbours

To the north, the Bahamas has the biggest file in the Caribbean; to the east, Haiti and the Dominican Republic share Hispaniola's short record; to the south, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands face the same deep trench; and to the west, Mexico has the Yucatán and its Caribbean resorts. The species living around the island are described in sharks in Cuba.

Written and reviewed by

SharkSider Editorial Team

A small team focused on researching sharks and making marine biology easy to understand. Every page is reviewed against current species records and the SharkSider attack database, and updated when new incidents or research appear.

Published August 19, 2023 · Last updated September 22, 2026 · 49 records for Cuba in the SharkSider attack database (26 fatal), updated weekly.