Florida Girl Killed By Shark Attack In Gulf Of Mexico

Two teenage girls on vacation were swimming on boogie boards Saturday in the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 yards offshore near the Camping On the Gulf Holiday Travel Park east of Pensacola. They suddenly noticed a dark shadow in the water, and moments later a surfer nearby heard a bloodcurdling scream. Tim Dicus, 54, was surfing not far from the girls when he heard the scream. Paddling over to see if he could help, Dicus found the girl floating face down in a pool of blood on the water, with most of her thigh missing, the bone showing. "Right next to her was the shark, about to come up and attack her again," Dicus told the Associated Press. He quickly pulled the girl onto his surfboard to take her to shore, and the shark tried to grab her hand.

According to Dicus, the shark appeared to be a bull shark, about 8 feet long. "He just followed us right to the beach," Dicus said. "He was determined to finish lunch. I hate to put it that way, but that was what he was trying to do." Dicus said the shark even tried to attack him also, but he was able to fend it off by punching it on the nose. Two other nearby swimmers hurried over, bringing along a raft to help tow the girl to shore. The victim was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. Her swimming companion was not injured. According to the Walton County Sheriff’s office, swimmers were ordered out of the water along a 20-mile stretch of beach immediately after the attack. It was uncertain whether or not the beach would be closed again on Sunday.

There were more than 30 shark attacks per year in Florida between 2000 and 2003, but last year there were only 12 attacks. According to statistics generated by the American Elasmobranch Society and the Florida Museum of Natural Histroy, the number of shark attacks worldwide have been declining for the past three years. Authorities think the decline may be due to swimmers being more aware of the inherent dangers of swimming in the ocean, with the public becoming more cognizant of the fact that the sea is a wilderness belonging to potentially dangerous creatures, and people are intruders in that environment.

"I think people are beginning to get a little more intelligent about when and where they enter the water," says George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File maintained by the Florida Museum of Natural History. Scientists don’t usually worry too much about yearly fluctuations in shark attacks, because of the variety of meteorological and oceanographic conditions that could result in such fluctuations. Larger numbers of bait fish swimming close to shore, or alterations in the way people use the ocean, can affect the potentiality of shark attacks. But the decline in attacks over the past three years may also indicate a long-term trend, according to Burgess, who points out the possibility that there are fewer people swimming in areas where sharks might be. "The first explanation that comes to mind is that there are simply fewer sharks out there in the water," he said. "We know that shark populations have declined internationally because of overfishing." Economic concerns may also be a factor, with fewer people now being able to afford beach vacations than in 2000, when there were a record number of 79 attacks worldwide. "The number of shark attacks in any given year is directly related to the amount of time humans spend in the sea as well as the number of sharks living there," Burgess said.