INJURED – 30 November 2012 – Kihei, Maui, Hawaii – snorkeller bitten

Thomas Floyd Kennedy recovers in a Maui hopsital after being bitten by shark while snorkelling

Thomas Floyd Kennedy, 61, was bitten on the thigh and lower left leg by a shark while snorkelling off Kihei, Maui, Hawaii. The incident happened around 9.40am about 250 metres offshore near Kihei.

The victim was treated on shore and taken to Maui Memorial Medical Center.

“Initially it didn’t hurt so much. It was mostly just fear of a second attack,” he was quoted as saying.

He said he was snorkelling with two others. They rode paddle boards to a spot more than 250 metres off the Kihei coastline.

Kennedy said he felt a tug and looked down to see his leg in the shark’s mouth.

“It released me. So I started swimming as fast as I could. I would guess I was a still a hundred yards from my board,” he said. “As I went further, I started to bleed. I could see a string of blood, which was my next concern.”

Crew from Wailea Canoe Club who were in the water at the time helped him to shore.

Kennedy and experts reckon it was 10 foot tiger shark that bit him.

Sources:
Maui News

Oregon Live

PIC Source:
Screen grab from Maui News video

INJURED – 4 November 2012 – waters off Waiehu Golf Course, Maui, Hawaii – spearfisherman attacked

Marcelino Riglos recovers in hospital after being bitten on the foot by a shark while spearfishing off Maui.

Marcelino Riglos, 30, was bitten on the foot by a 12-15 foot tiger shark while spearfishing with a friend in waters about 300 metres offshore of Waiehu Golf Course, Maui, Hawaii.

He was coming up for air when the shark clamped on his right foot and started shaking it from side to side.

“I started whacking it in the face with my hand,” he was quoted as saying. “My foot was dangling and blood was shooting all over the place.

“I thought I was going die out there. (It) was crazy.

With the help of his friend they tied a tourniquet with dive gear to stop the bleeding. They shed their floaters and spear guns, and swam back to shore which took a hair-raising 25 minutes.

He was taken to hospital where he received surgery for his wounds.

Sources:
Maui News

 

INJURED – 3 April 2012 – Alligator’s Rock surf spot, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii – surfer bitten

Joshua Holley was bitten on the foot by a shark while surfing on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii

Joshua Holley, 28, was bitten on the left foot by a shark while surfing a spot called Alligator’s Reef, close to Leftovers and Chuns reef on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii. It is believed to have been a 10 foot tiger shark.

The incident happened around 12.30pm on Tuesday 3 April, 2012.

It is reported Holly was lying on his board waiting for a wave when a shark bit his foot.

Holly told TV media: “It was like this popping sensation on my foot. When I looked down I saw this huge dorsal fin and I saw the tail. And all of a sudden this shark comes around to like the front side of my board. I managed to get hold of his gills and hit it on the side of the nose and then he submerged.”

When he paddled in after the attack he was helped to shore by 2 strangers. He was treated on the beach and taken to Wahiawa General Hospital where he received 42 stitches.

It is reported he was due to be taken to Queens Medical Center to reattach two tendons.

Sources:
Hawaii News Now

PIC source:
Hawaii News Now

 

INJURED – 19 January 2012 – The Lagoon, Coral Bay, Western Australia – snorkeller attacked

David Pickering was bitten on the right forearm by a tiger shark while snorkelling at The Lagoon, near Coral Bay, Western Australia

Tour Operator David Pickering, 26, was bitten on the right forearm by what is believed to be a 3-metre tiger shark while guiding a group of snorkellers at The Lagoon, north of Coral Bay in Western Australia.

The incident happened about 100 metres from the shore at around 2pm on 19 January 2012.

According to press reports Pickering suffered tendon damage, but his injuries were not life threatening.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service, which flew in to pick him up, said he suffered some nasty lacerations to his forearm and that he was being taken to Perth for treatment. He was reported in stable condition.

According to press reports, another operator said he highly doubted it would be a tiger shark claiming it was more likely to be a reef shark that bit Pickering since there were thousands in the area.

No other details were immediately available.

Sources:
Perth Now
Sydney Morning Herald

PIC source:
Perth Now

FATAL – 19 September 2011 — Boucan Canot beach, Reunion – surfer attacked

Boucan Canot beach, Reunion. -- Photo credit: Philippe Amiot

Mathieu Schiller, 32, was dragged off his surfboard while surfing off Boucan Canot beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. The attack by a tiger shark reportedly lasted less than 30 seconds. His body was not recovered.

The incident happened on Monday 19 September 2011.

Schiller, a European team body boarding champion in 1995, was surfing with a group of surfers when the attack happened.

Witness report:

There were around 20 people in shallow water and about five surfers out deeper when it happened.

We saw the shark’s nose emerge and then the man just vanished. It was very sudden, then the animal just swam off.

According to other witness accounts the shark circled Schiller before moving in “with terrifying speed”.

Witness report:

I was waiting for a wave with my feet in the water. We saw the shark and the next thing I knew was that he screamed and raised his arm.

We then saw a cloud of red blood in the water where he had been.

Reports differ about what happened next. Some say the surfers then managed to get Schiller, who was suffering from a gaping wound in his leg, back onto his board. One  report says that the shark, which had become frenzied because of blood in the water, returned and hit the surfboard, knocking the victim back into the water. Another report says that a wave hit the board and Schiller fell off and disappeared beneath the surface.

Rescuers in a dinghy searching later for the body reported that a 4 metre bull shark had struck the dinghy trying to overturn it.

Sources:
The Local

EuroSport Yahoo

Mail Online

PIC Source:
The Local

INJURED – 11 September 2011 – Hula, Papua New Guinea – kite boarder attacked

Thomas Viot, 30, was bitten on the right leg by what he believed was a two-metre tiger shark while kite-boarding in surf on a reef at Hula, south of Port Moresby, the Papua New Guinea (PNG) capital on Sunday afternoon, 11 September 2011.

A friend of his at the scene said Viot was surfing in big waves about a kilometre offshore when something knocked him off his board and when he surfaced there was a bad cut on his right leg.

“The shark appeared to have launched itself out of the water at him to take his leg out,” he added.

He said the injury was “quite bad, with some deep wounds but does not appear to be crippling in that not much flesh was actually ripped away”.

 

Viot was quoted as saying: “I managed to ride back with my kite-surf. It was bleeding very badly and I don’t know how, but I managed to ride back.

“I lost a lot of blood and the leg needs to have surgery.”

Viot, a French diplomat, was kite-boarding with two friends when he was attacked. His friends managed to give him first aid during the two-hour trip to hospital in Port Moresby, from where he was evacuated to a hospital in Brisbane, Australia.

Viot, who had been in PNG for the past 2.5 years, said there were always “plenty” of sharks at the reef, but he did not see this one before it attacked.

Sources:
7 News
Courier Mail

INJURED – 6 July 2011 – Roches Noires, Saint Giles, Reunion – surfer attacked

Arnaud's surfboard following an attack at St Giles, Reunion

In a brief report, Arnaud (no second name reported), 15, was bitten by a shark while surfing at Roches Noires, Saint Giles, Reunion. The incident happened on 6 July 2011.

According to the report he was surfing at the exit to the harbour breakwater when he was attacked by what is believed to be a tiger shark. He escaped with minor injuries – “some scratches to the nose and ankle”.

He shouted for help and was rescued by lifeguards on a jet ski. He was taken to Gabriel Martin Hospital and was discharged a little later.

He surfboard was badly damaged in the attack.

No other details were reported.

Sources:

Linfo.re

SCARED – 25 May 2011 — Lyman Beach, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii – surfer attacked

Theresa Fernandez - narrowly escaped a shark attack while surfing in Hawaii

Theresa Fernandez escaped inury when a shark bit down on the back of her surfboard while she was surfing at Lyman Beach, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. The incident happened on Wednesday 25 May 2011 and comes three days after a paddle boarder and grandson were knocked off their board by a shark at Lyman Beach.

She told HawaiiNewsNow she said she was paddling out for one of her last waves of the day.

“There’s a big thud on the bottom of my board, and I’m thinking, ‘okay, we have encounters with turtles all the time’. And next thing I know, the thud is followed by a big yank from the back of my board, backwards and down.

“Half my board and my body went under the water, and I just started to paddle as strong as I could to try and get away.”

The shark let go and she paddle to shore and alerted others.

“I don’t think she got to have eye to eye contact with the shark like I did,” said Alayna DeBina, the paddle boarder who was knocked off her board three days earlier, “but from what I hear, she was surfing and luckily she had her legs up in the air on the board at that point, and the shark apparently bit her board from the back and shook it up real good and then let it go, probably because the skeg poked it in its mouth.”

A shark specialist studied the bite and said it appeared to be a tiger shark. The report said tests were still being done to determine the size of the shark.

Source
HawaiiNewsNow

PIC Source
HawaiiNewsNow

FATAL – date unknown – Bahamas, Caribbean Sea – person unknown

In a gruesome reversal of many reports on this blog – this time the shark has been identified, but not the person.

According to media reports originating mostly from the Bahamian newspaper, Tribune242.com, a 12-foot Tiger shark was hooked about 35 miles south of New Providence over the weekend of 4-5 September 2010 near the Exuma chain of islands in the Caribbean by fishermen who were targeting grouper.

The Tiger shark that had human remains in its belly

Apparently, when the shark bit onto a grouper that was caught by the fisherman, they claim it regurgitated a human foot, which promted them to reel it in for closer inspection.

“We tied the rope around his tail fin, and pulled him towards the boat. We were going to cut the hook out of his mouth and let him go when he regurgitated a human foot — intact from the knee down,” a fisherman told Tribune242.com.

The shark was taken ashore and cut open at the Defence Force’s Coral Harbour base. In its belly Defence Force officers found the man’s right leg, two severed arms and a torso in two sections.

The victim is described as a “black man, of heavy build and heavy structure”.

“He had neither clothes nor any identifying marks,” one of the deep sea fishermen who hauled the gruesome catch on board his boat, was quoted as saying.

Human remains spill from Tiger shark's slit belly

The article said police were awaiting DNA results to tell them if the remains belong to one of three men who were reported missing at sea. They included 62-year-old Frank Brown Sr and 47-year-old Delton Newton, who disappeared after their boat experienced engine trouble in waters off the Port of Clifton Pier, Bahamas the week before this gruesome find. And a man was reported missing after he disappeared from a boat off Acklins Island, Bahamas, the week before.

However, an archivist at the Global Shark Attack File said the body of the man did not necessarily come from the Bahamas as Tiger sharks regularly migrated large distances and that undigested remain could stay in the stomach “for quite a while”.

According to a study by Rathburn and Rathburn’s on human remains found in a shark, published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, human parts can remain undigested in a shark’s belly between eight and 21 days.

Sources
Tribune242.com
NBC Miami

PIC source:
NBC Miami

INJURED – 23 July 2010 — Jacksonville Beach, North Florida, US – surfer attacked

Clayton Shultz, 20 was bitten on the left leg by what is thought to have been a tiger shark while he was surfing Jacksonville Beach, North Florida in the United States. He required more than 300 stitches to close the wound and repair torn tendons.

The incident happened on Friday, 23 July 2010.

Shultz said he didn’t get to see the size of the shark.

Another surfer helped get him to the shore where he was rushed to Shands Medical Center in Jacksonville.

He is quoted in various media as saying:

“I was hopping back on my board and the shark came up and grabbed my foot and shook his head a little bit, and I think he kind of realized that he was biting the wrong thing, so he let go.

“I had a good grip of my board, so I didn’t go down. It took me a second to process everything. I yelled out to another guy who was in the water, ‘Hey man, I just got bit by a shark.

“All I could really feel was teeth and tearing.

 “I popped right up and got on my board and lifted my foot out of the water. It was torn up real good.

Shultz underwent five and a half hours of surgery and received more than 300 stitches to close the wound and repair severed tendons in his foot.

Sources:
The Telegraph
TCPalm