Posted on 06/25/2005 2:19:19 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
A 14-year-old girl died Saturday after a shark attacked her while she and a companion were swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, authorities said.
The teenagers were swimming on boogie boards about 100 yards offshore when they noticed a dark shadow in the water, authorities said.
"One of the swimmers was bitten. It was the lower portions of her body," said Walton County Sheriff's spokeswoman Donna Shank. The other swimmer was not injured.
Both girls swam to shore, and the victim was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead, Shank said. The girl was on vacation from Louisiana, but her name was not immediately released.
The attack happened near the Camping on the Gulf Holiday Travel Park, about 45 miles east of Pensacola on the Florida Panhandle.
Patrick O'Neill, the campground's general manager, refused to comment.
Authorities closed about 20 miles of beaches to swimming shortly after the attack. It's the height of the summer tourism season along the coast and the beaches were packed with people.
"This doesn't happen very often at all — very, very seldom," said Mike McKee, front desk supervisor at the nearby Hilton Sandestin Beach Resort and Spa.
Florida had the largest number of documented shark attacks worldwide in 2003 with 30, according to statistics compiled by the American Elasmobranch Society and the Florida Museum of Natural History. There were 12 attacks off the coast of Florida last year.
It happens enough to discourage me from going too far into the water.
Wonder if the MSM will bring backthe "Summer of the Shark"?
I just heard some shark expert on Fox News say that the incident happened in Walton County in Florida and there has NEVER been a shark attack recorded in that area...
You always hear of how rare this is, how it almost never happens; I'll bet that this girl heard the same thing.
So what! If there's a chance of it happening, I'm not going in the ocean! Being attacked by a shark is probably mankind's most primitive fear. I'm going in up to my ankles, and that's it.
"100 yards offshore " seems a bit far to me.
Time for a shark hunt. And if PETA protests we can throw them to the sharks.
Land shark!
Somehow it will be Rumsfeld's fault.
Hmmm ....I always thought being attacked, squeezed, and eaten by a giant constrictor (eg Reticulated Python) was the most primal. Anyways, definitely been eaten by anything is pretty dire.
Must mean either sharks natural food sources are dwindling or they're evolving into sticking near the shore lines, easy prey like people since we resemble seals swimming on the waters surface. Who knows. I'm never swimming past four feet of ocean water ever again.
If you stub your toe tonight the libs will tell you Bush did it.
Won't work. They attack at that depth as well.
There isn't a seal anywhere near Destin, Florida. I think this 14 year old resembled FOOD.
My biggest fear is a bear attacking although sharks are in close second with gators third, and most likely given where I live, and rattlesnakes fourth.
What kind of shark? Anbody heard? Where we go in Destin it is shallow at low tide way out. My husband routinely goes out to swim that far at least.
"Won't work. They attack at that depth as well."
Yeah but at least I can attempt to run out of the shallow water than try to out swim a giant shark.
Last year's "Ivan" and "Arlene" from a few days ago have moved much of the beach sand offshore in sand bars. That, coupled with the girls using--according to one news report--"boogie boards" could explain both why they were attacked and how they were able to get back to the shore.
The basic idea is that you go out in a boat and throw chum in the water until sharks appear, and then you kill ten or twenty of them with a FAL rifle, and the rest will all kill eachother.
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