Great white shark attacks US surfer in New Jersey

Times of Oman ^ | June 9, 2005

[Mongeaux]

EW YORK –– A teen surfer in New Jersey needed 60 stitches after being bitten by a great white shark in the state's first recorded shark attack in 30 years.

In interviews with local press Thursday, Ryan Horton, 17, said he had been surfing off New Jersey's Surf City on Sunday when he felt a stabbing pain in his right foot that he likened to being hit with a baseball bat.

When he lifted his leg out of the water, he found a deep gash just above his ankle and a smaller wound on the other side of his leg.

A friend took him to hospital where the wound was closed with 60 stitches.

Horton initially had no idea what had happened, until his doctor suggested a shark attack as a possible cause.

Horton's father then e-mailed a photo of the wound to George Burgess, curator of the Florida-based International Shark Attack File, who concluded that the wound was caused by a juvenile great white shark, probably about six-feet (1.8 meters) in length.

The attack was subsequently recorded as the first in New Jersey waters in three decades -- a frequency level embraced by Surf City surfers.

"I have a better chance of getting hit by lightning," Mark Travers, 20, told the Newark Star Ledger. "You can't live your life scared." –– AFP

[par4]

Some think that the 1916 attacks were made by a bull shark, not a great white. Bull sharks are more likely to go up estuaries like the brackish river where three of the attacks occured.

I'm not too sure that the expert was correct in diagnosing this attack as a great white. There are more mako sharks around here than whites and I believe that their bites are somewhat similar.

[xJones]

It's possible that it was a bull shark in the 1916 New Jersey attacks. Have you read of the latest shark attack on the New Jersey coastline? They're calling it a great white shark attack but it might have been a sandbar shark. Great white shark likely chomped on N.J. surfer .