Another Fatal Shark Attack in Ixtapa Mexico

I know I am a couple of days behind but I just caught this story on the interweb and thought I would pass it along in case some of you missed it.

According to news sources there have actually been 2 new shark attacks, one of them fatal, down around Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo coastline in Mainland Mexico.

If you remember Adrian Ruiz a surfer from San Francisco bleed to death from a shark attack while surfing the nearby area of Troncones Beach in April.

These latest attacks were reported at a beach called Pantla and at Playa Linda beach.

At Pantla Beach, Osvaldo Mata, was reported to have been mauled by a large 6' shark which bit off his hand and gouged his thigh. Apparently his brave friends paddled over and helped him to shore but he died of his wounds before medics arrived.

You can read more about the fatal attack here
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2430753720080524


The second attack, which occurred a couple of days later at Playa Linda, was on Texan Bruce Grimes. According to the news article the shark gave him a quick swim-by and then snagged his arm as he was trying to get back to the beach. After a bit of a struggle Grimes apparently was able get away from the shark and make his way to shore and eventually drive to medical help where he ending up with something close to 100 stitches. (Got to give the man credit for keeping his shit together enough to get to help.)

You can read more about the attack at Playa Linda Here http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN26346680


Man this is crazy...it really seems like 2008 has been a horrible year for shark attacks both domestically and internationally. (If some of you have seen a story about year to year frequency of shark attacks forward it on).

I love animals and nature as much as the next guy (if not more) but I am definitely starting to have issues with humans getting pushed back into the food chain.

Shark Attack! – Ixtapa, Mainland Mexico

Please don’t take this the wrong way…first and foremost my heart goes out to this surfers family and friends. I am a father, brother, and family man first and foremost so this is not me being flippant…

…but seriously you have to be f-ing kidding me!...two fatal shark attacks within a week! This is a freaking nightmare.

If you are reading this for the first time here are the details…according to news reports another surfer, Adrian Ruiz from San Francisco, died from wounds suffered during a shark attack. The attack occurred along the coast of Mainland Mexico…close to the Ixtapa area…specifically 45 minutes west at an area called Troncones beach.

Here are links to the stories if you need more details…

This is part of the story on MSNBC

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24377174/

Here is the link to the story on Surfline

http://www.surfline.com/surfnews/article_bamp.cfm?id=15109

Another Shark Attack - Swimmer Killed off Solana Beach

Seriously I am so sick of talking about sharks...but it is hard to ignore a story when someone is hurt or killed by one.




From the initial news reports a man, in his 60's, was swimming with a group of other swimmers in the ocean while they trained for a triathlon. They were a ways offshore when according to witnesses a large "grey" shark attacked the man, who eventually died from his wounds.

Here are some links to the News Stories that I found online...

Terry Rodgers' report from the San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE is probably one of the better ones...

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20080425-1113-bn25shark2.html


Here are a couple of others...

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20080425-0926-ca-sharkattack.html


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sharkattack,1,2305377.story


Here is some video...

http://video.nbcsandiego.com/player/?id=244777


Think that this is going to become a more of a trend or is it still just another case of bad luck? Drop me some comments on the blog and tell me what you think...

More shark attack stuff…(man can’t we all just get along?)

So my friend over at the OCRegister emailed me this story this morning…and no it is not another HB shark attack…it actually happened out in Fiji.

Basically a local Fijian fisherman was attacked by three sharks as he was fishing near a more obscure surf spot (IE Not Tavaraua). According to the article and the photos the sharks tore up his arm pretty badly and he was in danger of bleeding out before he could get medical help.

Fortunately for the fisherman there was a surfer, Tom Rolfes, who happened to be a dentist, visiting the island with his family. The Doc sacked up, broke out his emergency kit, and managed to sew the fisherman back together enough to save his life.

I thought I would give a shout out to the Doctor and his family for pulling off some high-pressure heroics.

Here is a picture of the Dr. Rolfes in action.



And here is a link to the story…make sure to check it out (Laylan does a much better job of telling it than I can).

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/rolfes-meli-surf-2015023-timmy-island

I am just stoked that the Dr. was able to save the guy’s life, MacGyver style….and still managed to sneak a surf photo into the OCreg’s slide show. Classic.

Huntington Beach Shark Attack: Email interview with Tom Larkin (the guy whose board was apparently better tasting that you would have thought).

After my post the other day I got an email from Tom Larkin, the guy whose board got munched. He seemed a little bummed by some of the media’s response to his story, which is understandable. I am pretty aware of how the media can twist things around…and even the junk that I post up on the blog gets bent around to my personal perspective. So I thought it would be good to get the story first-hand from Tom…and he was cool enough to answer a few of my questions about the incident.

So here is the interview, emailed to me from Tom. I haven’t changed anything except to remove spaces to make it more format friendly.

Interview with Tom Larkin:
----------------------------------------

Where do you normally surf? What would you consider your local spot?

El Porto

What brought you down to HB, and dog-beach that morning?

Came down the night before for a friend’s b-day. We were going to surf Blackies, but it was flat, so everyone headed north.

What kind of board where you riding? What size? (In the picture it looks like it has carbon fiber deck).

6’6 DOC bat tail quad (It’s an AVISO, all carbon fiber)

About what time did you actually paddle out?

7:00

Was anyone surfing with you or near you?

2 friends, but they got out and were watching me from the parking lot. A couple of bodyboarders to the north about 150 yds, one guy had just gotten out before I came in.
And there were a couple longboarders further south (about 200 yds) on the better peak.

How long were you in the water before you got hit?

About an hour

Did you recognize what was happening initially? When did you figure out what was going on?

Nope….sort of when I was belly riding in, definitely when I turned the board up and all the water it took on poured out of the bite.

Describe the attack…How long did it last? How violent was it?

Maybe 5 seconds. It wasn’t a huge jolt, kind of like a jerky teeter totter with a lot of bubbles from the board, and then it calmed down again and I caught the next wave.

Did you actually see or touch the shark?

No, I thought it was a board malfunction (leash plug o-ring popped), so I didn’t even turn around.

How freaked out were you?

On the beach I was freaked out, but also buzzing with how lucky I was. I guess I was in shock for a while.

Are you planning on staying out of the water for a while?

No. I figure I’ve had my brush with the boss.

Will you surf the HB/Bolsa/Dog Beach area again?

Wouldn’t be my first choice, but if it’s epic……

Is there any doubt in your mind that it was a shark?

No

Any doubts that is was a "great white"?

I’ll defer to the experts on this one. Call Ralph Collier at the shark research committee, or Dennis Kelly at Orange Coast College, marine science dept.

Here’s the relevant part of an article posted a couple days ago.

Quoted From http://beach.freedomblogging.com/2008/03/31/shark-story-continues/
March 31st, 2008 posted by Laylan Connelly

I had to talk to the expert, Ralph Collier.

Let’s throw down this man’s credentials first. He’s the president of the Shark Research Committee, and he started in 1962 as a field investigator tracking great whites’ behavior for the Smithsonian Institute and the Office of Naval Research. He also claims to be the scientist who in the 70s developed the measuring techniques used to calculate shark size based on shark tooth punctures.And he spits out stats like: “From 1900 to the present, there have been 145 attacks, about 87 percent attributed to the white shark.”

Collier says the great white is indigenous to the Pacific Coast and North America.
“We have had more confirmed sightings along the entire Pacific Coast then they’ve had any other place in the world,” he said.

Seriously???!!!???

Apparently, they come close to shore to give birth, especially around spring during grunion season. Adult female white sharks give birth in March and April, near shore. Then the juveniles – about 4-feet long when born - stick around for a year or two.

As for Tom’s claim, he said there’s no doubt it was a great white that nailed the board. He said there are plenty of photographs from the 20th century of surfboards with no damage to the rudder.

When asked about lifeguards dismissing the claim, he said: “The people the media are quoting don’t know the first thing about it. I don’t critique them in the lifesaving duties. When it comes to science, they should leave it to the experts in that field.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that they don’t want people to think about sharks when you go to the beach,” he said.

He said the shark that bit Larkin’s board was 16-to-17 feet in length. He’s going to pick up the board and physically examine it himself.

“If I was going to guess, it was very possible this was a female
shark coming in close to shore to possibly give birth, or has given birth and is
still in the area,” he said. Oh, and there’s no doubt it was a great white.

As far as the claim that sharks don’t come around here, he cites a number of cases: A white shark was caught off the Huntington Beach pier two years ago. There was a fatal attack of a diver in 1959 in La Jolla. And a kayaker was killed in Malibu in 1989, with the other kayaker’s body never found.

He forgot to mention the great white picked up a few years back about 16 miles off the coast of Huntington Beach, taken to the Monterey Aquarium to be put on exhibit.

“We have to realize our place in nature. We’re Subject to the animals that live there. For anyone to assume that couldn’t happen, they’re foolish,” he said.

(Make sure to check out Laylan’s full story at http://beach.freedomblogging.com/2008/03/31/shark-story-continues/)

Back to the questions…

Because of the timing (coming so close to april fools day), and the location's history of pranks, you have taken a little heat from the lifeguards, press, and the always brave "random anonymous posters on the internet"…did you think there was going to be such a response when you made the report to the HB Lifeguards and the Shark Research Committee?

Not at all. I didn’t know about the sea snake fiasco until a couple of days ago. But I suppose I figured the pictures of tooth marks in both rails with a 21 inch diagonal bite radius would make the lifeguards take notice and become a little more vigilant in regards to beach patrolling or public notification.

You mentioned in your email that Lt. Mike Beuerelin (I am assuming from the HB Guards) issued an apology to you…what were the circumstances of that?

I called him yesterday and told him that I wasn’t trying to be a thorn in his side through the media, but that I was pretty upset at being called a liar on CBS. He explained he was on vacation during the interview for the LA times, and that the views expressed by Mr. Reuter (the MSO interviewed) were not those of the Dept. and he was sorry if it came across like that.

Any final words to the readers?

Be careful. Don’t surf alone, don’t surf during grunion runs, and if you feel weird get out of the water.


Here are some Pics of Tom’s board…(courtesy of Tom)










At the end of the day both Tom and Ralph (the shark expert) have some good points…the ocean can be a dangerous place…and you can get hurt in it. On the flip side of that coin the odds are against shark attacks…and personally I feel that if you take the right precautions…and don’t have incredibly bad luck, (especially when it comes to great white sharks), you can still enjoy it.

*Special thanks to Tom Larkin, Laylan Connelly, and the Ocean Media bullpen for helping me roll this together.

Huntington Beach Shark Attack – Legit or worst April Fools Day prank ever?

So this story has been slowly creeping into the news over the last few days…

Apparently this guy, Tom Larkin, was surfing dog beach in Huntington, which is up between Bolsa Chica and the Huntington Beach Cliffs, and something munched his surfboard. (UPDATE: Make sure to read my interview with Tom Larkin)

On one side the surfer and a couple of scientists from the Shark Research Committee say that it was a great white shark.



On the other side you have the HB lifeguards and others with a lot of HB experience calling bullshit…mostly because they have not really observed really any great-white/human interaction along this stretch of coast.

Personally I am on the skeptical side…I surfed waaaaay up north for a number of years (in my misspent youth) and there is a definite feel to the type of ocean and conditions that great white sharks generally hunt in. Not to mention you always see a lot of collateral damage…headless sea-lions and other torn up sea-life, and a ton of stories from all the local fishermen.

In HB you just don’t have those things…I have never heard of any shark attack by a shark bigger than a small blue or sand shark in the nearly 18 years that I have lived here.

That being said wild animals are wild…they do crazy things sometimes…maybe this one just hates guys from the LA South Bay.

Anyway if you want more of the legit details check out Laylan Connelly’s article that ran over on the OCRegister.com

Here is the link…make sure to vote in the poll on her page. (She buys me more beer the more votes she gets…hmmmm beer)

http://beach.freedomblogging.com/2008/03/31/shark-story-continues/#more-1666


One last thing…

I sort of feel bad for the surfer because of all the people calling BS on his story…especially if he really believes that he was about to be eaten…that has got to scare the poop right out of you. But I have to admit the guy has got really bad timing…it was almost April 1st and that area of Bolsa Chica has a reputation for surfers staging elaborate practical jokes (I am sure many of you remember the Red Nigerian Banded Salt Water Marsh Snakes).