GRAND BAHAMA, Bahamas (17 Aug 2001) -- A man who was bitten by a shark while snorkeling in the Bahamas was recovering Friday in the same Florida hospital where another shark attack victim is being treated. Those attacks, an earlier attack on a boy in the Gulf of Mexico and a recent gathering of migrating sharks off the Florida coast have heightened fears of the predators this summer. ''These events really do have a strange effect on people. It's a normal fear. There have been legends and stories that have been going on for ages,'' said Chris Smith, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service in St. Petersburg. The convergence of sharks earlier this week off Anclote Key was not an unusual event, he said. The Pasco County Sheriff's Office issued alerts to boaters and swimmers about hundreds of sharks that had gathered in the area about 20 miles north of St. Petersburg. The sharks were mostly black tips, a common species not considered a mortal threat to people, with some hammerheads and bull sharks. Some were up to 10 feet long. They appeared to be migrating to the south. ''These types of aggregations have been going on for eons,'' Smith said. ``It's just that we have more people and more eyes in the skies to notice these kinds of things.'' The International Shark Attack File, which compiles data on attacks, noted that people suffer more injuries and illness from other beach-going activities than sharks: sunburns, jellyfish stings and drownings. The file, which is maintained at the University of Florida, listed 79 unprovoked shark attacks on humans worldwide last year - including 34 in Florida. The yearly average during the 1990s was 54. | | The latest reported victim is Kent Bonde, 43, of Miami Shores, who was wounded on his left calf by a shark Thursday. He was listed in good condition Friday at Jackson Memorial Hospital. He was snorkeling and spearfishing in about 20 feet of water 400 yards from the shore of Grand Bahama when the shark bit his leg, police said. ''He felt a burning sensation in his leg and he realized what was happening and he got out of there,'' said Dr. Tamara Burke at Rand Memorial Hospital on Grand Bahama. He was transferred to Miami about four hours later. Burke said Bonde lost muscle and tissue on his leg. On Aug. 4, a 36-year-old Wall Street banker from Central Islip, N.Y., was attacked while swimming off Grand Bahama. Krishna Thompson's leg was amputated above the knee. He is still being treated at Jackson Memorial. And 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast still remains in a light coma after a shark attack July 6 near Pensacola. The boy from Ocean Springs, Miss., lost nearly all his blood when a bull shark severed his arm and bit a chunk of his thigh. The boy's arm was pulled from the shark's gullet and reattached. © CDNN - CYBER DIVER NEWS NETWORK |
