SUFFOLK COUNTY, N.Y. (PIX11) — In less than 30 hours this holiday week, Long Island may have had half as many shark bites as it had all of last year, even though 2022 saw a record number of bites, with eight.

Right now, state and local authorities confirmed that there have been three shark bites in the ocean waters off the South Shore since Monday afternoon, as well as one additional marine animal bite that is being investigated as a possible shark bite.

It’s left officials assuring beachgoers that they’re taking every effort to protect them, while at the same time calling on people who come to the seaside to be vigilant, and to be in contact with lifeguards and marine patrol officers at area beaches.

New York State Parks lifeguards launched a drone off Robert Moses State Park’s Field Beach 3 just before the beach was set to open on Independence Day morning. What it detected a few hundred yards off shore caused lifeguards to ban swimming.

“They saw a school of sharks,” said George Gorman, the regional director of New York State Parks, in an interview. “Sand sharks, approximately 50 of them.”

The beach remained shut down for about an hour and a half.

When there were no new sightings, lifeguards allowed people to go back into the surf, only to change the order again minutes later, when somebody reported another possible shark sighting just east of the first one.

Zach Fishman was one of hundreds of people at the beach at the time.

“The lifeguards said that there was a marine sighting,” he said. “Everybody just started coming out.” He added that people wasted no time leaving the water.

However, after another 90 minutes or so without a shark sighting, beachgoers were allowed to go back into the water again at Robert Moses State Park.

Nine miles east, though, just before 2 p.m. on Independence Day, there was a shark bite off Fire Island Pines. A 49-year-old man was bitten in that incident.

Also in the afternoon on the Fourth of July, a man was bitten in the surf of the Atlantic Ocean off of the village of Quogue, in the eastern end of Long Island.

Those happened a day after a 15-year-old boy was bitten while on his surfboard in the waters off Kismet Beach at Fire Island. Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison spoke with the boy by phone as he recovered after being released from the hospital.

“He stated that the shark was about 4-5 feet in length,” Harrison said. “It took a nice bite out of his left foot and caused some gashes to his toe and heel, as well as punctured his left calf.”

That was at around 5 p.m. on Monday. Three-and-a-half hours before that, at Robert Moses State Park, a 15-year-old girl was bitten.

However, at the very same location where a shark bit her on Monday, people were back in the water on Tuesday.

“The weather has been so bad in New York, I’ll take any beach day,” said Sophia Batista, minutes after emerging from the Robert Moses surf. “I’ll just have my ears open for the lifeguard, and have my eyes open for the water.”

Her friend Raquel Cordo agreed. “Can’t live in fear, you know?” she said.

Suffolk County Police and New York State Parks officials said they have waverunners, drones, helicopters and, of course, lifeguards looking out.

Still, they said, the frequency of shark bites and sightings is an indication of ocean health.

“This is our new normal,” said George Gorman, the state parks director for the Long Island region. “We have more baitfish and bunker fish, and that’s what’s drawing the sharks closer to shore.”

In all of the shark attacks this week, the people who’ve been bitten were either treated at local hospitals and released, or declined medical attention.

One of them, the 15-year-old boy bitten off Fire Island, provided a look at how beachgoing may be, going forward, as shark bites become more commonplace.

He spoke with Commissioner Harrison.

“I asked our victim,” Harrison said in an interview, “‘Listen, do you plan on going swimming again?’, and he goes, ‘Oh absolutely.'”

“So if he’s willing to go swimming and go surfing again,” Harrison said, “then sure enough, I will as well.”