http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/060...l_njshark.html

SURF CITY BOROUGH, NJ-June 8, 2005 — A teenage surfer was bitten in an apparent shark attack off the New Jersey coast, and experts believe a small great white may be responsible. It would be the first recorded shark attack in the state's waters in 30 years. Ryan Horton, 17, said he never saw what bit him when he felt a stabbing pain in his ankle Sunday afternoon.

"I was swimming up and it just felt like somebody hit me in the foot with a baseball bat," Horton said. He paddled to shore, where his brother helped him to a hospital. Horton received more than 50 stitches on his lower leg.

Based on the tooth marks, the season and the location, the shark was likely either a small great white or a sandbar shark, said George Burgess, a Florida expert who is curator of the International Shark Attack File. He had examined an e-mailed photo of Horton's injury.

Two local experts said they think it was a great white shark.

"In cool water like this, you would have to suspect great white," said Richard Fernicola, who wrote a book about shark attacks off the New Jersey shore in 1916 that that left four people dead. "A great white is much more likely to be aggressive to man than a sandbar shark."

Great whites are not uncommon off New Jersey. Bob Schoelkopf, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, said he believed great whites frequently come to Brigantine Bay to give birth in the spring.

"If they find good feeding, they may be up here all summer long," Schoelkopf said.

The state's last shark attack happened in 1975 when a swimmer suffered minor injuries.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

30 years ago?

Jaws came out 30 years ago.

Spooky.

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I was really surprised to hear that a swimmer who attacked by a wihite shark at a Jersy beach. I did not think those big bad whites came in these waters. Don't they swim around Australia?

Not only do they frequent the waters off the Jersey shore, but the most infamous series of Great White attacks in modern history occurred not in Australia but in New Jersey, in 1916. Read the book "Close to Shore" for a really interesting account of it.

I have that book- my father is from north central Jersey, and heard stories about the great shark attacks of 1916 from the locals...

Interesting stuff...

Sharks are usually not that much of a threat- people who study them say they don't intentionally hunt humans, but sometimes they confuse swimmers for other animals and go after them...

I am glad the kid's going to recover- 50 stitches though- must've been quite a bite...

:shock:

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I called a couple of my surfing buddies when I read this earlier today to tell them. They didn't believe me until they saw it for themselves. They were thinking of heading out to Brigantine tomorrow... or at least they were, heh.

I know that up around Rhode Island/Mass there are tons of Great White breeding grounds (and where there's an occasional "taste test"), and I had heard that they are in Jersey too. But I've only come across a shark in Jersey once, and, as far as I know, or could tell, it wasn't a Great White (probably a Bull). However, when I lived and surfed in the Azores (Portugal) we used to see sharks on an almost regular basis. Tigers, Bulls, Black and White tips, and though I never saw one personally (thank God), there were a couple sightings and one attack by a White.

So, umm, yeah. Surfing. Sharks. Happens.

I believe Great Whites actually prefer cooler waters - they're less likely to be found in tropical seas. Hence their presence off San Francisco (Farralon? Islands) and along the Australian coast - and from NJ up to New England.

The first pulblicized shark attack in temperate waters ever happened July 1 1916 in front of the Engleside Hotel in Beach Haven on Long Beach Island, which is just above Atlantic City directly west of Philly (not North Jersey as many people think). Until then ichthyologists (guys who study fish & sharks) thought that a shark did not have the power to do any damage to a human. The person who got attacked and later died from his injuries was a young man named Charles Van Sant. He had grown up at 4038 Spruce St. in University City. He had graduated from Episcopal and U of Penn. He was only about 22. His father was a doctor at Pennsylvania Hospital, and saw his son get attacked. Unfortunately he was unable to save him. There were two books written about the subject a couple of years ago. One is Close to Shore and the other Twelve days of Terror. Both are great beach reads, and full of interesting facts. It is literally an unbelievable story. If it was not documented and witnessed by many people it would be impossible to believe What I can remember from the two books is that most sharks attack at dawn or dusk but not a white shark, they will attack when and where they want. Also rarely does a Great White shark attack a human. It is almost always juvenile whites, when they go from a mainly fish diet to mostly mammals - seals ect. They get confused by humans, but they know we are mammals so they go in to check it out and a playful nip is their way of checking it out. Unfortunately an investigative bite is usually pretty bad news for the guy on the other end. Below is an article from the Inky. What is really scary is that this a 40 45 year cycle. 1916 -- 1960's 2005. Uh oh. I mean either way the chance of getting attacked is infestismal. It won't keep me out of the water, but it will be on the back of my mind.



"He theorized that the attack was part of a 40- to 45-year meteorological cycle that may bring sharks closer to the New Jersey shoreline. He said the weather patterns - a particularly wet and cold April and May followed by a heat wave - mirrored those in 1916 and the early 1960s, when there were a series of attacks.

Five fatal shark attacks have been recorded in the state, including four attributed to a great white that prowled the coast in 1916 and inspired the story behind Jaws. The fifth fatal attack was in 1926.

Between 1960 and 1966, there were five unprovoked shark attacks in New Jersey.

Oh also the 1916 attacks is where Peter Benchley got his ideas for Jaws.


Attacked by Shark

Surfer at Shore believed bitten by a great white.

It may have been no Jaws, but experts say a great white shark - a juvenile about six feet long - most likely took a bite out of a surfer's foot at the Jersey Shore on Sunday.

And they suspect the cold and rainy spring may have set the stage for New Jersey's first shark attack in 30 years.

While shark experts yesterday stressed the rarity of such an encounter, local authorities, clearly concerned about the impact of a shark attack at the start of the summer season, referred to the injury off Long Beach Island as "an alleged shark bite."

Ryan Horton, the 17-year-old surfer, spent yesterday recuperating at his home in Forked River, Ocean County. He received 63 stitches, his family said.

"You never expect to hear about a shark attacking someone you know, much less your own grandson," said Linda Flynn, who was fielding visits from reporters at Horton's home yesterday.

Horton was paddling his surfboard over a sandbar in three feet of water, about 25 feet off the 18th Street Beach in Surf City, when something grabbed or hit his right foot about 12:30 p.m. Sunday, police said.

Horton, a 10th grader at Lacey Township High School who has been surfing for two years, quickly paddled back to shore. His older brother helped him out of the water and took him to Southern Ocean County Hospital, where Horton was treated and released the same day.

Horton told relatives that he had no idea what had caused the burning pain in his ankle and initially thought a surfboard had hit him. But an expert who examined a photograph of the wound emailed by Horton's mother said he had no doubt.

"It's a slam dunk," said George H. Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research. "There was no doubt at all that it was a shark-inflicted bite."

And not the bite of just any shark, but the distinctive chomp of a great white - a highly aggressive creature that feeds on fish and marine mammals but rarely humans, experts said.

Burgess, one of the nation's top shark-attack experts and curator of the International Shark Attack File, said the deep, slashlike bite on the top of Horton's foot was characteristic of a white shark, whose teeth are serrated "like a steak knife."

The photo, he said, showed "clear impressions" of three upper-jaw teeth and a laceration nearly to the bone - a hallmark of the great white's powerful jaw.

"The more I've looked at the photograph, the more I'm convinced that it was a small white shark," Burgess said yesterday. "It's the No. 1 suspect."

He said the time of year and cold water also eliminated other suspects, such as a bull shark or a dusky shark. They typically do not appear in New Jersey waters until late summer.

Burgess said the attack was what experts call a "hit-and-run," in which a shark mistakenly bites a human and does not return for a second taste.

"That white shark was probably looking for fishes in the troughs - the channels between the sandbars - and what happened is it just interpreted the splashing of the surfer's foot as being the movement or activities of fishes," Burgess said.

Another shark expert, Richard G. Fernicola, agreed that the most likely culprit was a great white.

He theorized that the attack was part of a 40- to 45-year meteorological cycle that may bring sharks closer to the New Jersey shoreline. He said the weather patterns - a particularly wet and cold April and May followed by a heat wave - mirrored those in 1916 and the early 1960s, when there were a series of attacks.

Horton was the 16th confirmed shark attack victim in New Jersey. The last attack was in 1975, when a wader at Sandy Hook suffered minor injuries, according to Burgess' files.

Five fatal shark attacks have been recorded in the state, including four attributed to a great white that prowled the coast in 1916 and inspired the story behind Jaws. The fifth fatal attack was in 1926.

Between 1960 and 1966, there were five unprovoked shark attacks in New Jersey.

Just before the 1916 attacks, there was an increase in sightings of sandbar sharks, said Fernicola, author of Twelve Days of Terror: A Definitive Investigation of the 1916 New Jersey Shark Attacks and a volunteer at the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine.

He said there had been recent reports of sandbar sharks in the Barnegat Bay area and a "record number" of stranded seals, including varieties from Canadian shores that are relatively rare here.

But Fernicola and Burgess said bathers and boaters had little to fear. A repeat of 1916 is unlikely.

Worldwide, sharks on average kill fewer than 10 people each year (three in 2002). And the nonfatal attacks, typically fewer than 100, usually cause only minor injuries. Deer, on the other hand, kill on average 130 people in collisions with cars in the United States annually.

Don Myers, beach supervisor of the Long Beach Township Beach Patrol, said he had been patrolling the beach in the township for 39 years and never had a shark attack on his 12-mile stretch, which attracted about 1.5 million visitors last year. He said the water conditions Sunday were "highly unusual."

"We had water that was stunningly beautiful, a Caribbean blue-green. We had cow-nose skates, blues, and bait fish up and down the shore."

Myers said his nearly 200 lifeguards will err on the side of caution this summer, pulling people out of the water if they see a fin they cannot immediately identify as a dolphin or other harmless fish.

Ellen Johnson, executive director of the Southern Ocean County Chamber of Commerce, said yesterday that she did not expect the attack to affect Shore business.

"This is such an isolated incident," she said.

The lifeguard squad in Surf City is not scheduled for patrols until June 18. As temperatures soared into the 90s yesterday, bathers and surfers on the unguarded 18th Street Beach were undaunted by news of the shark attack. Several were in the water in the vicinity of the attack and said they had no qualms.

Among them was Dave Clauss, a local 18-year-old surfer.

"I don't care at all," he said. "Surfing is all that matters. That kid was really unlucky."

Even Horton said he planned to be back surfing next summer. For now, he just wants his foot to stop throbbing, said his aunt, Megan Flynn-Sindoni.

Shark Safety Tips

Shark attacks are extremely rare, but you can take steps to reduce the chances further.

Stay in groups; sharks are more likely to attack a solitary swimmer.

Do not wander too far from shore.

Avoid being in the water during darkness or twilight, when sharks are most active.

Do not enter the water if bleeding from a wound or if menstruating.

Do not wear shiny jewelry; the reflected light resembles the sheen of fish scales.

Avoid waters used by fishermen, especially if there are signs of bait fish or feeding activity. Diving seabirds are good indicators of such action.

Do not assme that the presence of porpoises means the absence of sharks. Both often eat the same thing.

Refrain from excess splashing, and do not allow pets in the water because of their erratic movements.

Be cautious when between sandbars or near steep dropoffs; these are favorite shark hangouts.

Get out of the water if you see a shark.