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Scuba Diving News
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Sunday, 07 February 2010 02:49 |
Stephen Schafer was killed on the 27th January 2010 while kite-surfing at Hutchinson Island's Stuart Beach, Florida. Many mainstream media outlets reported this incorrectly as a great white shark attack.
Great White: The first culprit
At first, lifeguard Dan Lund believed that Shafer's equipment had failed and paddled out 20 minutes through rough seas to come to his aid on his long surfboard, approximately a quarter-mile offshore.
"I get to him, I'm probably within 20 yards or so from him, and there's just a lot of blood in the water," Lund said.
Stephen Schafer 2007
Lund could see several sharks circling nearby and grabbed Schafer and pulled him and the kite onto his 12-foot rescue board and headed for shore.
"He got to Mr. Schafer, he reassured him, and then he had to hold him physically on the board," said Martin County Marine Safety Captain Ray Szefinski. "The sharks all that time were swimming around them and Dan has to have his hand in the water just paddling with one hand."
Captain Szefinski said that if lifeguards had known it was a shark attack, they would have called for a zodiac boat rescue and a jet ski. But that would have taken too long, he said.
"This was no little deal," Szefinski said. "Dan Lund went probably over 500 yards out in the ocean in real rough conditions with sharks swimming all around - it is almost like a miracle that he didn't get hit."
Although Shafer later died of his wounds, Lund is being hailed as a hero by fellow rescue workers.
Florida Shark Attack Analysis
A fatal shark attack in itself, is an incredibly rare event, with an average of only 5 occuring worldwide every year (compare that to 200 deaths per year by elephans). This shark attack was the first fatal attack in Florida for 5 years and the first ever recorded fatality at Stuart Beach since records began.
Great white sharks have been observed as solo-hunters and Lund's account of seeing multiple sharks make a great white an unlikely suspect in this attack.
George Burgess, director of shark research at the Florida Museum of Natural History, says, "Our investigation definitively indicates it was not a great white shark". Instead, he said, an examination of the victim's wounds suggests that the attacking shark was eight to nine feet long and was more than likely a bull shark or tiger shark.
A Bull Shark
A Tiger Shark
Although Burgess was able to narrow the range of potential species involved in the attack, officials have made arrangements to consult a second shark-bite expert to help solve the mystery.
"Sharks can be identified by their dentition [teeth]," he says.
A tiger shark has saw-edged teeth on both its upper and lower jaws. In contrast, a bull shark has pointed teeth on its lower jaw and triangular, serrated teeth on the upper jaw.
The pointed teeth are designed to hold prey, while the upper teeth are built for cutting. According to Gilbert, puncture wounds produced by the lower jaw would be present in a bite from a bull shark, but not from a tiger shark.
There was further incorrect information televised, putting the attack down to migrating sharksup Florida's east coast. Experts agree that the bite came from an approximately 8 foot shark and migrating sharks would have been too small to be involved in the attack.
Gilbert says he suspects that the kite surfer plunged into the water at exactly the worst place. "It is possible that he actually fell on the shark," he said. "If there were a number of sharks out there, it could be that he just fell at the wrong spot at the wrong time." The researcher added, "We'll never know."
The victim, Stephen Schafer, was well known in Stuart, said Mr. Perry, whose office is across the street from Stuart Beach, where the attack took place.
A memorial ceremony is set for Saturday at Stuart Beach, where Mr. Schafer's friends will hold a barbecue and a "paddle out," in which surfers paddle offshore and form a large circle in remembrance.
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