Lulu Gribbin was 15 when she survived a shark attack off the coast of Florida. She lost her left hand, part of her right leg and almost her life.
What she didn’t know when she entered the water on that day in 2024 was that another woman had been bitten by a shark 90 minutes earlier and just 3 miles down the beach. Had she known about the earlier attack, there is no way she would have been swimming, she said.
Her story has inspired new federal legislation to authorize emergency alerts to mobile phones to warn beachgoers when a shark has bitten someone in the area.
President Trump last week signed “Lulu’s Law,” which requires the Federal Communications Commission to allow the emergency messages. The legislation, which Lulu advocated for, authorizes the warnings by classifying a shark attack as an event for which an emergency alert can be issued. It is up to states to implement the warnings. Lulu’s home state of Alabama approved such a warning system last year.
“It’s really just common-sense legislation. It says that whenever there has been a shark attack in a certain area where you are near, it will send an alert to your phone, exactly like how an Amber Alert system works when a child is abducted,” she said.
Lulu said she hopes the alert system will help prevent attacks like hers. “I definitely see this law working in the future and I’m really excited to hopefully save lives,” she said.
She was one of three people bitten by a shark on June 7, 2024, off the Florida Panhandle.
She was on a mother-daughter trip. She said she and her friend had been diving for sand dollars.
“All of the sudden my best friend yelled, ‘Shark!’ and so we all started swimming for our lives,” Lulu recalled. She said she remembered that sharks are attracted to frantic splashing and yelled for everyone to be calm. Lulu, who was closest to the shark, was bitten.
“The shark bit off my hand first, and I raised my arm out of the water, and there was just flesh and bone there,” she said. The shark then latched onto her leg. A man punched the shark off her and strangers on the beach rushed to help. She was flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital.
Doctors were able to save the teen’s life but had to amputate part of her right leg.
In the hospital, Lulu made a deliberate decision to choose joy and to never give up.
She initially struggled, knowing “that I only have two regular limbs, and that my life would be completely different.”
“I would cry, and I would ask my mom, ‘Why is it happening to me?’ And on that day, we put a Bible verse on my bedside table that said, ‘With God, all things are possible.’ And then she told me that what you look like doesn’t define you, it’s who you are on the inside. And so, I think that stuck with me throughout my whole recovery the past two years.”
She was fitted with prosthetic limbs, quickly regained her ability to walk, returned to sports and got her driver’s license. She has gone back in the water and learned to surf, meeting Bethany Hamilton, a professional surfer who lost her arm in a shark attack.
U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, the Alabama Republican who sponsored the legislation, said the fact that Lulu was bitten soon after an attack on another woman prompted discussions about what could have been done differently. That led to the idea of an alert. She contacted Lulu’s parents, who had thought about the same possibility.
“If there had been any type of alert that was given, that there’s no way that Lulu would have been in the water. And so we talked about how a simple change could have made a huge impact,” Ms. Britt said.
While sharks are commonly found in the waters off the United States, shark bites are rare, said Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Museum of Natural History’s shark research program.
There are between 60 to 80 known unprovoked bites worldwide each year, he said. It’s extremely rare that two or more people are bit in close proximity. He said in a database of known shark bites, called the International Shark Attack File, there have only been a few instances of multiple bites in a single day.
“If somebody is bitten by a shark, and then an alert goes out, the probability that another person’s going to be bitten by a shark within, let’s say, two or three hours is incredibly small,” Mr. Naylor said.
When that happens, he said it’s likely because of environmental conditions such as sharks following schools of bait fish closer to the shore. Murky water conditions also can be a factor because they increase the chance that a shark will mistake a person for a fish or seal.
In the area where Lulu was bitten, there are about 20 to 30 bull sharks about a quarter-mile offshore at all times, Mr. Naylor said. Great white sharks have been spotted more frequently in the chilly waters of New England and Atlantic Canada, according to conservation groups. A smartphone app called Sharktivity also allows shark spotters to report their sightings.
The sightings might unnerve people, but Mr. Naylor said it’s important to remember that shark attacks are rare.
“If sharks wanted to eat people, we’d have about 10,000 bites a day. The fact that we have so few is basically testament to the fact that the sharks are doing their level best to avoid people, not to target them,” Mr. Naylor said.
