A man is recovering in a Brisbane hospital after being bitten by a shark and airlifted for treatment from a Moreton Bay island.

The man, who is reported to be 29, was mauled in the waters off the bay side of Moreton Island near the Wrecks Walking Track shortly after 3pm on Saturday.

Paramedics treated him on the scene for abdominal and leg injuries before a rescue helicopter flew him to the Princess Alexandra hospital in a stable condition, where he remained on Sunday morning.

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It is the second shark attack in the bay in less than a month – after 17-year-old Charlize Zmuda died after being bitten by a shark off Bribie Island just north of Brisbane in early February – and the fourth shark attack in Queensland waters in recent months.

On 28 December last year, 40-year-old Luke Walford, 40, was killed by a shark near Humpy Island offshore from central Queensland, weeks after a man was hospitalised after a shark attack on nearby Curtis Island. Both of those men were spear fishing when they were bitten.

The Wrecks Walking Track connects the Tangalooma resort near a cluster of ships scuttled in the 1960s through to the ’80s which are a popular snorkelling spot for visitors to the sand island.

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Australia is seeing a long-term increase in the number of shark bites, but experts say this is largely due to the fact that the country’s growing population means more people are in the water.

Bond University’s Dr Daryl McPhee told Guardian Australia that the risk of a shark bite “remains extremely low, and fatal bites are even lower”.

He said there were an average of 2.7 deaths from shark bites in Australia between 2014 and 2023, compared with 1.8 deaths in the previous decade.

Gavin Naylor, the director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s shark research program, said that the ability of Australia’s beach rescue services to respond to bites was “second to none” which probably keeps the number of fatalities down.

Australia is a global shark attack hotspot, largely due to the country’s affinity for the ocean.

In 2023, there were 10 fatal shark bites globally, with four of those occurring in Australia – three of them off the coast of South Australia.

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