BRIAN SKOLOFF
Associated Press Writer
5:26 PM CST, February 4, 2010
STUART, Fla. (AP) — There was blood in the water, the sharks were
circling and a grievously hurt Stephen Schafer — his thigh gashed and
his hand mauled — was screaming in pain by the time the lifeguard
reached him.
The lifeguard pulled Schafer onto his rescue board, but his cries
quieted as he drifted in and out of consciousness.
He would
soon be dead, marking the first deadly shark attack in Florida in five
years, and perhaps a rare instance of a lethal attack by a swarm of
sharks.
Schafer, 38, was attacked Wednesday afternoon a
quarter-mile off South Florida's Atlantic Coast while he was out
kiteboarding — using a large kite-like sail to pull him along the
surface on a board strapped to his feet. When the winds lightened and
his sail dropped, the Stuart man found himself in the water, surrounded
by sharks.
Lifeguard Daniel Lund, 47, spotted Schafer as he
scanned the ocean with binoculars from the beach about 100 miles north
of Miami. He said Schafer appeared to be in distress but wasn't
flailing around. Instead, he seemed to be floating on his kite in the
choppy water.
Lund paddled out, struggling through 6-foot
waves. As he got close, he said, the normally turquoise-green ocean was
red with blood, and he could see the shadows of perhaps two or three
sharks circling Schafer, churning the crimson water, occasionally
breaking the surface.
"The one thing he said is he'd been bitten by a shark," the lifeguard said
Afraid the blood would set off a feeding frenzy, Lund cradled the man's
head and with one arm, began paddling back to shore as fast as he
could, fighting the current and wind.
About 20 minutes later,
they were on the beach with paramedics performing CPR on a badly
bleeding Schafer. He died a short time later at a hospital.
Schafer, an artist and graphic designer with a lifelong love of the
water, had a 10-inch gash in his right thigh and numerous teeth marks
on his buttocks. Authorities said his right hand was mauled in an
apparent attempt to fight off the animal — or animals.
Authorities are investigating what types of sharks were involved and
whether more than one shark bit Schafer. Beaches remained open Thursday.
The International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida's
Museum of Natural History lists 1,032 documented shark attacks in the
U.S. since 1690. Fifty of them were fatal.
"Internationally,
we've been averaging four fatalities per year, despite the fact that
there are billions and billions of human hours spent in the sea every
year," said George Burgess, who oversees the file. "Your chances of
dying in the mouth of a shark are close to infinitesimal."
He
said that it was too soon to say whether Schafer was bitten by more
than one shark, but that once there is a lot of blood in the water,
other sharks sometimes come and investigate and may attack.
Friends said Schafer always followed the buddy system while surfing,
and they were surprised he was in the water alone. They said he knew
sharks were out there this time of year.
"It's hard to believe
that such an experienced waterman would make that one mistake," said
Teague Taylor, a childhood friend who says Schafer taught him to surf.
Schafer surfed competitively and later started sailing, windsurfing and kiteboarding.
"He had to be around the water," said Taylor, who manages a local surf shop.
The last fatal shark attack in the state was in 2005 off the Panhandle,
where a 14-year-old Louisiana girl was attacked while swimming about
100 yards off shore.