LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Has Kentucky really been the site of a shark attack?
It was a question brought up this week thanks to Colorado's governor.
Confused? Well, here's the deal.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is pretty active on his personal Twitter account, which has over 112,000 followers, and a Monday night tweet from the Democrat featured a map titled "Shark Attacks!" that showed the number of incidents in each state.
While states bordering an ocean had numerous attacks, the map indicated Kentucky, Missouri and Illinois have each seen one attack.
"I have questions," one commenter said, focusing on that trio of inland states.
The map includes no source for its data.
But a quick search on UnderwaterTimes.com, a Sarasota, Florida-based site that dubs itself the "world's leading news source for the world underwater," reveals the one documented instance of a shark attack in Kentucky.
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No, it did not take place in the Ohio River.
But it did occur very close to the river.
An UnderwaterTimes.com article from 2006 reported on the shark bite incident at Newport Aquarium, located just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati in Northern Kentucky.
"Safety Questions After Visitors Bitten at Kentucky Shark Petting Exhibit; 'They Don't Mind At All'," the headline reads.
The brief article says nearly a dozen people "walked out of the Newport Aquarium's Shark Central exhibit wearing Band-Aids after they were bitten."
It then explains how the aquarium's exhibit has "almost 20 sharks for visitors to touch," with some being babies and some adults that are 2 to 8 feet long, adding that all of the sharks "were chosen specifically for their behavior."
"What's the reaction to people touching them? They do not mind at all," aquarium biologist Scott Brehob was quoted as saying in the article. "I've had kids that are anywhere from 8 months to 2 years to 3 years touching these animals."
The article says that although the sharks drew blood from "a few of the visitors they bit, aquarium officials said the injury is no worse than a paper cut."
"It's more like the lines of a catfish," Brehob reportedly said. "They are bristle-type teeth. It's like a broom."
A subsequent check of SharkAttackData.com backs up the report of the Newport Aquarium incident, with the site categorizing the July 31, 2006, shark attack as a "provoked" incident involving 12 people who touched the "small catsharks" and sustained "minor injuries, similar to paper cuts from the captive sharks."
So there you have it — the one documented shark attack in Kentucky left a group of aquarium visitors with nothing more than bandaged injuries similar to a paper cut.
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The reported Newport Aquarium incident may not have been on the mind of former Kentucky Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo when he pitched that the Bluegrass State's tourism slogan should tout its lack of shark attacks.
"Adventure tourism is critical to our economy — especially in rural Kentucky," Mongiardo reportedly said at a 2009 event. "Look at the assets we have — the lakes and the outdoors.
"We have everything you can imagine doing outdoors, except salt water. Kentucky — no sharks.”
Reach Billy Kobin at [email protected].
