NYC lifeguards rescued a woman attacked by a shark off a popular beach using a buoy rope as a tourniquet

• A shark attacked a woman this week while swimming at a popular New York City beach.
• Lifeguards saved the woman using the rope from a buoy as a tourniquet, the New York Post reported.

A shark attacked a woman this week while swimming at a popular New York City beach in an incident believed to be the first shark bite encounter there in 70 years.

Fast-thinking lifeguards at Queens' Rockaway Beach bolted into the ocean to rescue the 65-year-old woman when they heard her "crying for help" on Monday evening, chief lifeguard Jose Diaz told the New York Post.

The swimmer was just "just treading water, relaxing" when she was bitten on her left leg while about 10 feet offshore, Diaz said. Lifeguards pulled her out and saved her by using the rope from a buoy as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, he added.

"We saw that she was bitten," Diaz told the news outlet. "The blood was coming out a lot so they gave her a tourniquet with the buoy, which has a rope, and they tied it so she doesn't bleed to death."

The Post reported that the shark bite victim, identified as Tatyana Koltunyuk, lost about 20 pounds of flesh as a result of the attack.

"She lost a lot of blood," Diaz told the newspaper. "The artery came right out. You could see the bones and everything. It was crazy."

Diaz, a longtime lifeguard, said that he's never seen an incident like this one.

"We go swimming like every other day. We go swimming with the lifeguards and we see sharks but they don't really do anything to us. This is the first time this happened. It's weird," he said.

"Everybody's afraid to go into the water now. I don't blame them," Diaz added.

The New York City Fire Department told Insider that medics who responded to a report of a "major injury" just before 6 p.m. rushed the woman to a local hospital in stable condition with serious injuries.

Her wounds were "consistent with a shark bite," a fire department spokesperson confirmed.

The shark attack — believed to be first on Rockaway Beach since 1953 — shut down the beach on Tuesday as a "safety precaution," said the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.