Tourists are getting trapped on remote Shark Island off NC’s Outer Banks, park warns

Multiple tourists became trapped on a treacherous island off the North Carolina coast in August, forcing the National Park Service to coordinate highly risky rescues, park rangers say.

As a result, Cape Lookout National Seashore has issued a warning about the ominously named Shark Island.

“Recently, the gap in between Shark Island and Cape Lookout has begun to connect with a narrow bar of sand during the lowest of low tides,” park officials wrote in an Aug. 14 Facebook post.

“In the last two weeks, we have had two separate incidents of visitors crossing to Shark Island at low tide and becoming trapped as the tide rises behind them. These situations have resulted in first responders from multiple agencies being dispatched to conduct complex rescues.”

The most recent rescue took place Monday, Aug. 14, and involved five people who left their vehicles at Cape Lookout and walked across the “land bridge” at low tide, the park says.

“Given that you’re looking at roughly six hours between high and low tides, being stranded out there could obviously present a pretty serious public hazard, especially if adverse conditions were incoming during that six-hour window,” park officials told McClatchy News.

Being stuck isn’t the only danger. Shark Island is currently a quarter of a mile wide and three-quarters of a mile long and it shrinks as the tides rise. The ocean around the island is also known to churn where the northbound Gulf Stream and southbound Labrador Current collide.

“The waters south of Cape Lookout can be incredibly dangerous,” park officials said. “Getting caught by a rising tide while traveling on foot through this narrow band of sand could quickly sweep someone off their feet and out to sea.”

The park’s Facebook post has gotten hundreds of reactions and comments, including people who say they have experienced being stuck on Shark Island in years past.

“We did that last summer,” one commenter wrote. “The sandbars disappeared within minutes and all of a sudden we were trapped with the kids. Thankfully we waded and swam back across holding the kids up but it was super scary.”

Shark island has long been a popular attraction for people with boats, and the National Park Service says boaters continue to be welcomed.

The island is one of those mysterious spits of land off the North Carolina coast that are known to rise from the ocean over a period months, only to vanish again during storms.

Among the best known examples is Shelly Island, which surfaced on satellite in 2016 and eventually grew to 20 acres and a mile in length. The island vanished after a series of storms in 2018, McClatchy News reports.

This story was originally published August 15, 2023 at 6:46 AM with the headline "Tourists are getting trapped on remote Shark Island off NC’s Outer Banks, park warns."