Another shark attack..

[Steff]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/27/shark.attack/index.html

 

 

Boy critical after 2nd Florida shark attack

 

Monday, June 27, 2005; Posted: 2:57 p.m. EDT (18:57 GMT)

 

 

(CNN) -- Another teenager was the victim of a shark attack in the Gulf of Mexico, law enforcement officials on the Florida panhandle said Monday.

 

Christa Hild, a spokeswoman for Bay Medical Center in Panama City, said the boy was in critical condition with severe injuries and was in the operating room. She said his family was on the way.

 

Laura Taylor, secretary for the Gulf County Sheriff's Department, told CNN that the attack happened at Cape San Blas on St. Joseph's Peninsula. She had no further information.

 

WMBB reporter Kira Mathis told CNN the boy was fishing on a sandbar, about 50 yards from shore, with another boy when the attack took place. He was taken to a nearby hospital and then flown to Bay Medical Center by helicopter.

 

Witnesses told Mathis he was "in and out of consciousness."

 

In Panama City, Hild said the boy arrived shortly before noon.

 

Cape San Blas is about 95 miles southeast of Miramar Beach, where a 14-year-old Louisiana girl was killed Saturday in a shark attack. (Full story)

 

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,152602,00.html

 

Thousands of sharks seen off the coast..

 

 

Umm.. hello people.. if someone came into your house hoootin and hollerin wouldn't you want them out.. The ocean is the sharks house. Please don't be surprised if you get asked to leave by one..

[Brian]

I remember when I was 10, we went down to Florida one summer and multiple times they had to clear out the water cuz of shark threats. You can imagine what a movie like "Jaws" would do to a kid like I was, and than this happened. I never stepped foot in the Gulf.

[Steff]

I remember when I was 10, we went down to Florida one summer and multiple times they had to clear out the water cuz of shark threats. You can imagine what a movie like "Jaws" would do to a kid like I was, and than this happened. I never stepped foot in the Gulf.

 

 

All those years I lived in Florida I never went into the ocean past my ankles. I would see my family out there and just cringe. I don't get the allure. Sand, salt, smelly, people going to the bathroom in it, sharks, etc, etc.. I'll take a pool over the ocean anyday.

 

I don't go in lakes either. Ick.

[LosMediasBlancas]

Lakes are just foul, but oceans are awesome and yes very dangerous in a few ways.

My wife was in Fl. about a year ago and there was a shark sighting while they were in the water. They hurried everyone out and she saw the shark swim by in very shallow water, in an area they'd been in just a few minutes before.

[Milkman delivers]

Every year around this time I see one of those pictures with a bunch of sharks swimming just feet away from people, and it scares the hell out of me every single time. Even when I'm in my own pool, sharks somehow cross my mind. Damn, Jaws.

[BurlyMan56]

I was at Ft. Myers Beach this past spring break...We also drove down to Miami Beach...Im guessing shark attacks are ujncommon there for some reason? Anyone have any history of attacks being encountered there...

[BurlyMan56]

Stef...What part of florida did you live in... Just curious...

[Rex Hudler]

All those years I lived in Florida I never went into the ocean past my ankles. I would see my family out there and just cringe. I don't get the allure. Sand, salt, smelly, people going to the bathroom in it, sharks, etc, etc.. I'll take a pool over the ocean anyday.

 

I don't go in lakes either. Ick.

 

You're such a girl!

[Rex Hudler]

I was at Ft. Myers Beach this past spring break...We also drove down to Miami Beach...Im guessing shark attacks are ujncommon there for some reason? Anyone have any history of attacks being encountered there...

 

Shark attacks against humans are extremely rare anywhere.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Shark attacks against humans are extremely rare anywhere.

But especially so out of the water....

[Balta1701]

In 2002, there were a grand total of 47 shark attacks on people in the U.S. Let's compare...shall we? Your odds of being attacked by a shark this year are therefore roughly 1 in 6 million.

 

Your odds of dying while falling down the stairs? 1 in 200,000. Better stay downstairs.

 

Your odds of dying of a bee, wasp, or hornet attack? 1 in 5.9 million. Higher than a shark attack. Better stay indoors.

 

Your odds of dying in a lightning strike? 1 in 4.3 million. Yup, more likely than a shark attack.

 

Odds of drowning in your bathtub? 1 in 800,000. You're gonna be pretty dirty.

 

Odds of being killed by a falling object? 1 in 400,000. Better not have any cabinets.

 

Odds of being killed by an agricultural machine? 1 in 500,000.

 

Odds of being killed in an automobile accident? 1 in 6,000. That's right, you're 1,000 times more likely to die this year in an automobile accident than you are to be attacked by a shark.

 

This whole thread is so damned irrational. You're scared of going in the ocean because of sharks, but you're not scared of getting in your car every day? Or of walking outside?

[FlaSoxxJim]

I think we've revisited this conversation every year for the last two or three around here, Balta, and we always throw around the same sorts of numbers to underscore the irrationality of it. And in the end, the folks who are irrationally afraid of sharks are still going to be irrationally afraid of sharks no matter how remote the chances of attack because it is the nature of irrational fear.

 

For me, it's friggin' dentists...

 

For others, it' sharks, or snakes, or spiders, or the Cubs winning the WS before the White Sox...

 

Everybody is deathly afraid of something I think.

 

As for the shark phobia, we all know where that struck home for lots of people:

 

QUINT:  Yeah.  The U.S.S. Indianapolis.  June 29th, 1945, three and a half

minutes past midnight, two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine slammed

into our side.  Two or three.  We was still under sealed orders after deliverin' the bomb...the Hiroshima bomb...we was goin' back across the Pacific from Tinian to Leyte.  Damn near eleven hundred men went over the side.  The life boats was lashed down so tight to make the bomb run we couldn't cut a single one adrift.

Not one.  And there was no rafts. None.

 

That vessel sank in twelve minutes.  Yes, that's all she took.

 

We didn't see the first shark till we'd been in the water about an hour.

A thirteen-footer near enough.  A blue.  You measure that by judgin'

the dorsal to the tail.  What we didn't know...of course the Captain

knew...I guess some officers knew...was the bomb mission had been so

secret, no distress signals was sent.  What the men didn't know was that

they wouldn't even list us as over-due for a week.  Well, I didn't know

that -- I wasn't an officer -- just as well perhaps.

 

So some of us were dead already -- in the water -- just hangin' limp

in our lifejackets.  And several already bleedin'.  And the three

hundred or so laying on the bottom of the ocean.

 

As the light went, the sharks came crusin'.  We formed tight groups -- somewhat like squares in an old battle -- You know what I mean -- so that when one come close, the man nearest would yell and shout and pound the water and sometimes it

worked and the fish turned away, but other times that shark would seem to

look right at a man -- right into his eyes -- and in spite of all shoutin' and poundin' you'd hear that terrible high screamin' and the ocean would go red, then churn

up as they ripped him.  Then we'd reform our little squares.

 

By the first dawn the sharks had taken more than a hundred.  Hard for me to count but more than a hundred.  I don't know how many sharks.  Maybe a thousand.  I do now they averaged six men an hour. All kinds -- blues, makos, tigers. All kinds.

 

In the middle of the second day, some of us started to go crazy from the

thirst.  One fella cried out he saw a river, another claimed he saw

a waterfall, some started to drink the ocean and choked on it, and

some left our little groups -- our little squares -- and swam off alone lookin' for islands and the sharks always took them right away. It was mainly the young fellas that did that -- the older ones stayed where they was.

 

That second day -- my life jacket rubbed me raw and that was more

blood in the water.  Oh my.

 

On Thursday morning I bumped up against a friend of mine -- Herbie

Robinson from Cleveland -- a bosun's mate -- it seemed he was asleep but

when I reached over to waken him, he bobbed in the water and I saw his body upend because he'd been bitten in half beneath the waist.

 

Well Chief, so it went on -- bombers high overhead but nobody noticin'

us.  Yes -- suicides, sharks, and all this goin' crazy and dyin' of thirst.

 

Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura swung around and

came in low.  Yes.  He did that. Yes, that pilot saw us.

 

And early evenin', a big fat PBY come down out of the sky and began

the pickup.  That was when I was most frightened of all -- while I

was waitin' for my turn.  Just two and a half hours short of five days

and five nights when they got to me and took me up.

 

Eleven hundred of us went into that ocean -- three hundred and sixteen

got out.  Yeah.  Nineteen hundred and forty five.  June the 29th.

 

...Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

[Steff]

This whole thread is so damned irrational.  You're scared of going in the ocean because of sharks, but you're not scared of getting in your car every day?  Or of walking outside?

 

 

Rationalize it all you want. I control whether I get bit by a shark. I to a point control if I fall down stairs, drown in the bath, etc.. don't like my fear, so be it. But s*** on it.. that's pretty f***ing stupid, in my opinion.

[Jabroni]

Rationalize it all you want. I control whether I get bit by a shark. I to a point control if I fall down stairs, drown in the bath, etc.. don't like my fear, so be it. But s*** on it.. that's pretty f***ing stupid, in my opinion.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I too will never step foot in an ocean. I fear da sharkies. I guess I've seen "Jaws" way too many times.

[Steff]

Stef...What part of florida did you live in... Just curious...

 

Orlando. Hated it with a passion.

[Balta1701]

Rationalize it all you want. I control whether I get bit by a shark. I to a point control if I fall down stairs, drown in the bath, etc.. don't like my fear, so be it. But s*** on it.. that's pretty f***ing stupid, in my opinion.

However, you don't control whether or not someone else driving their car will kill you. Therefore, you should never drive again.

[Steff]

However, you don't control whether or not someone else driving their car will kill you.  Therefore, you should never drive again.

 

 

No s***.. I also don't have control over the air I breathe, but you don't see me or most others walking around with an oxygen tank.

 

I have to drive a car.. I don't have to go in the ocean. You control the things you can.

 

As I said before.. pretty f***ing stupid.

[GoodAsGould]

However, you don't control whether or not someone else driving their car will kill you.  Therefore, you should never drive again.

 

 

Yes but if your in the ocean and a shark decides your food you are pretty much screwed, in a car you can at least have a little control and swerve out of the way of an accident or something in the ocean your helpless.... although unless its a tiger shark most times they wont attack.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Yes but if your in the ocean and a shark decides your food you are pretty much screwed, in a car you can at least have a little control and swerve out of the way of an accident or something in the ocean your helpless.... although unless its a tiger shark most times they wont attack.

None of that negates the fact that you are still 1,000 times more likely to die on the road that at the wrong end of a shark.

 

Shark attacks make national news because we humans have a morbid fascination with sharks. The real tragedy is the story that doesn't get reported. Since 1994, global annual fisheries landings of sharks has been at more than 71 MILLION individual sharks. Compared to the 61 unprovoked shark attacks on humans WORLDWIDE in 2004, only 7 of which were fatal (again, this is worldwide), I'd say the sharks are on the losing end.

[Be Good]

My phobia is not sharks, spiders, hights or anything like that. It is electricty. I will not plug anything in, unless it has a on/off switch or the outlet itself has a on/off switch. And even still then it takes a lot outta of me to actually do it.

Edited June 29, 2005 by Be Good

[Jabroni]

My phobia is not sharks, spiders, hights or anything like that. It is electricty. I will not plug anything in, unless it has a on/off switch or the outlet itself has a on/off switch. And even still then it takes a lot outta of me to actually do it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wow, Electrophobia.

[Kyyle23]

Yes but if your in the ocean and a shark decides your food you are pretty much screwed,  or something in the ocean your helpless....

 

So what? If you live in California, Florida, The Rockies, the Appalacians(sp?), a Puma could decide you are food and you are screwed. If you live in Florida, Louisiana, Georgia (any of the southern states) an Alligator could decide you are food and you are screwed. If you live in Alaska, Wyoming, (mostly northern states) a grizzly could decide you are food and you are screwed(in fact, it happened just 22 days ago http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/27/bear.attack.ap/index.html).

 

A large variety of predatory animals exist around us, and being completely afraid of them and avoiding everywhere they exist just isnt part of my lifestyle. Sometimes s*** happens. Like the kid who had his leg amputated. He confused the shark, the shark wasnt hungry for human blood. The kid was reeling in a fish when the shark attacked, the fish was thrashing in the water and there was fish blood in the water, the shark just honed in on the activity. Alligators attack people in Florida about as frequently as sharks attack people.(http://www.southeasternoutdoors.com/wildlife/reptiles/fatal-alligator-attacks.html)

in a car you can at least have a little control and swerve out of the way of an accident

 

Are you saying that anyone who is in a car accident has a chance to swerve out of the way? Thats utterly ridiculous, it is offensive to anyone who has had someone die in a car wreck.

 

although unless its a tiger shark most times they wont attack.

 

What are you basing this on? Tiger Sharks are known to be one of the most aggressive species of shark. And they are much bigger sharks, making the need for their food source to be bigger. http://www.njscuba.net/biology/sw_fish_sha...hore.html#Tiger

Edited June 29, 2005 by kyyle23

[FlaSoxxJim]

Tiger Sharks are known to be one of the most aggressive species of shark. And they are much bigger sharks, making the need for their food source to be bigger.

 

No, that is what he's saying – that tiger sharks are have a history of attacks on humans. Maybe there needs to be a comma in there, but you are in aggreement.

[Steff]

I have no idea if it's their size - many other sharks are bigger - but they are knows as "garbage sharks" because they eat any and everything. It's an impulse for them thanks to, IIRC, their senses which are super sharp and they simply attack and swallow anything that moves near them.

[Yoda]

All those years I lived in Florida I never went into the ocean past my ankles. I would see my family out there and just cringe. I don't get the allure. Sand, salt, smelly, people going to the bathroom in it, sharks, etc, etc.. I'll take a pool over the ocean anyday.

 

I don't go in lakes either. Ick.