Shark Attacks in Puerto Rico

Why so many people and so many sharks produce so few incidents in Puerto Rico

The answer begins with the shape of the sea floor. Puerto Rico's insular shelf is narrow on the north coast, where the island faces the Atlantic and the sea floor plunges towards the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean. On that side the beaches are exposed, the surf is often heavy and the water beyond the reef is very deep very quickly. The south and west coasts are different: a wider shelf, calmer water, mangrove-lined bays and the bioluminescent lagoons of La Parguera and Vieques. These shallow, sheltered habitats are where the island's juvenile sharks grow up, and they are also where the fishing and spearfishing communities of Cabo Rojo, Lajas and Guánica work.

The sharks themselves are typical of the northern Caribbean. Nurse sharks rest under ledges on every reef and are harmless unless handled. Caribbean reef sharks patrol the wall at La Parguera, Desecheo and Mona Island, where divers see them regularly. Lemon sharks use the mangroves as nurseries, bull sharks enter the estuaries and lagoons, and tiger sharks, scalloped hammerheads and silky sharks cruise the deep edges and the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. None of this is unusual for the region, and none of it puts large predatory sharks into the sandy, shallow swimming zones of the resort beaches on a regular basis.

The final piece is human behaviour. Most swimming in Puerto Rico happens on protected urban and resort beaches on the north and east coasts, inside reefs or in bays, in daylight and in clear water. The activities that generate most Caribbean bites, spearfishing with a catch on the body and wading in murky water near bait, are practised by relatively few people. The two entries in the record are exactly those two activities, which is the pattern a marine biologist would predict for this island.

Where the two Puerto Rican incidents happened, and where nothing has

With only two entries, a map of hotspots is really a map of one bite on each side of the island and a long list of coasts with no recorded incident at all.

• Carolina Beach, Carolina (San Juan metropolitan coast)The most recent entry. On 1 August 2025 a 39-year-old woman wading here was bitten on the thigh; she survived and the shark was never identified. Carolina's beaches sit east of Isla Verde on the island's busiest strip of urban sand, which makes this the only incident in the file on a mainstream swimming beach.
• Off Cabo Rojo (south-west corner)The first entry. On 19 June 2015 a 36-year-old spearfisher working off Cabo Rojo suffered an injury to his hand. The record gives no species and describes the injury only as an injury to the hand. Cabo Rojo's reefs and drop-offs are the heart of the island's free-diving and spearfishing scene, and a diver with speared fish is the classic trigger for a bite in the Caribbean.
• Vieques, Culebra and the east coastThe offshore islands and the beaches of Fajardo, Luquillo and Humacao have no entries in the database despite heavy snorkelling and swimming traffic. The reefs here hold nurse and Caribbean reef sharks, and the absence of incidents shows how rarely those species trouble people in clear water.
• The north-west surf coast: Rincón, Aguadilla and IsabelaPuerto Rico's surfing capital, with winter swells that draw surfers from across the Caribbean, has never produced an entry. Surfers make up a large share of bites in Florida and Australia; that they are absent here says something about the depth and clarity of the water off the north-west corner.
• La Parguera, Guánica and the south coastMangrove lagoons and shelf reefs that serve as nurseries for lemon, nurse and reef sharks and hunting grounds for bull sharks. Fishing and boating are intensive, swimming less so, and the database records nothing here.

The complete record for Puerto Rico

The two rows below come straight from the SharkSider database, which merges the International Shark Attack File, the Global Shark Attack File and verified local reports and is updated weekly. Both entries are from 2015 onwards, so the summary, the decade chart and the table all describe the same two cases; there are no fatal rows, no pre-1900 rows and no undated rows.

• Recorded incidents2
• Fatal0
• Years covered2015–2025
• Since 20002 incidents, 0 fatal
• Most common activitySwimming & wading
• Most identified sharkUndetermined shark

The most recent incidents

• 1 August 2025 · Carolina Beach, CarolinaWading — Bite to thigh areaShark: Undetermined · not fatal
• 19 June 2015 · Off Cabo RojoSpearfishing — Injury to handShark not identified · not fatal

Every recorded incident

Reading a two-row table is simple, but two cautions apply. First, a short file is not a complete file. The international databases depend on incidents being reported and confirmed, and a minor bite on a fisherman or a spearfisher in a small coastal town does not always reach them, so older cases may exist that the record does not hold. Second, the species column gives you nothing to work with: the 2025 case is logged as undetermined and the 2015 case names no shark at all. What the rows do establish is that Puerto Rico has no recorded shark death, and that neither of its incidents involved a swimmer in open water.

The sharks of Puerto Rico and which could be involved

Neither Puerto Rican entry identifies a species, so the discussion below is about what lives here and how each species behaves, not about which one bit whom.

Caribbean reef shark. The dominant large shark on the island's reefs, particularly on the walls off La Parguera, Desecheo and Mona. It is generally indifferent to divers but competes hard for speared fish, and a hand injury to a spearfisher off Cabo Rojo is the kind of incident this species produces across the Caribbean. See the Caribbean reef shark profile.

Bull shark. Present in the estuaries, lagoons and murky nearshore water of the south and east coasts, and the species most often behind bites on waders in turbid water elsewhere in the tropics. A single bite to the thigh in the shallows at Carolina is consistent with an investigative bite from a small bull shark, though the record does not say so.

Tiger shark. Found along the deep edges and in the Mona Passage, and responsible for the serious cases in neighbouring Caribbean records, but not implicated in either Puerto Rican entry. The tiger shark is the species to respect on the drop-offs at night.

Nurse, lemon and hammerhead sharks. Nurse sharks are the sharks visitors see most, resting on the bottom, and bite only when grabbed or cornered. Lemon sharks use the mangroves as nurseries and are shy of people. Hammerheads pass offshore and are almost never involved in bites. The full guide to sharks in Puerto Rico covers every species recorded around the island.

Sensible precautions for Puerto Rican waters

With two minor incidents in the record, the risk of a shark bite in Puerto Rico is among the lowest of any Caribbean destination with this much beach traffic. The precautions below are the ones the two entries point to, plus the general rules that apply on any tropical coast.

• Spearfishers: keep the catch off your body. The 2015 Cabo Rojo injury happened to a diver with a speargun. Tow speared fish on a float line, hand them up to a boat, and leave the water rather than fight a shark for them.
• Waders: avoid murky water, river mouths and bait. The 2025 Carolina bite was to a person standing in the shallows. Cloudy water after rain, schooling baitfish and fishing activity nearby all raise the odds of an exploratory bite from a small shark that cannot see what it is biting.
• Do not touch nurse sharks. Puerto Rico's most common shark is harmless until someone grabs its tail for a photograph, at which point it bites and holds on.
• Swim in daylight, inside the reef, in groups. The north-coast beaches drop into deep water fast; stay where you can see the bottom and stay away from dawn, dusk and night swimming.
• Respect lifeguard flags and closures. Rip currents kill far more people in Puerto Rico every year than sharks ever have, and the same flags cover both hazards.

If a shark does approach, our guide on how to survive a shark attack explains how to stay vertical, keep the animal in view, back towards shore or the boat, and defend the eyes and gills if it makes contact.

Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and world picture

The International Shark Attack File confirms roughly 60 to 80 unprovoked bites a year worldwide, and the entire Caribbean supplies only a small handful of them. Even within that quiet region Puerto Rico is quiet. The Bahamas, with its shark-feeding dives, and Cuba, with a record going back centuries, have far longer files; the Dominican Republic, across the Mona Passage and sharing the same species, also lists more cases. Puerto Rico's two entries, both minor and both since 2015, put it in the same bracket as small islands with a fraction of its population and visitor numbers.

Part of that is genuine: deep, clear water on the busiest coasts, and swimming concentrated on sheltered beaches. Part of it is reporting, since Puerto Rico's incidents reach the databases through the same channels as the mainland United States and a minor bite in a fishing village can go unlogged. Either way, the conclusion for a visitor is the same. Measured against the millions of people who enter the water here every year, the recorded risk is as close to zero as the Caribbean gets.

Shark attacks around Puerto Rico

West across the Mona Passage, the Dominican Republic and Haiti share Hispaniola and the same shark fauna. To the east, the British Virgin Islands have their own short file. Further afield, Cuba, the Bahamas and Venezuela show the range of Caribbean records, from the very long to the very short. For the full set of countries and US states in our coverage, start at the shark attacks overview.

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 14, 2023 · Last updated September 22, 2026 · 2 records for Puerto Rico in the SharkSider attack database (0 fatal), updated weekly.