Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Another Fatal Shark Attack in Ixtapa Mexico

I know I am a couple of days behind but I just caught this story on the interweb and thought I would pass it along in case some of you missed it.

According to news sources there have actually been 2 new shark attacks, one of them fatal, down around Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo coastline in Mainland Mexico.

If you remember Adrian Ruiz a surfer from San Francisco bleed to death from a shark attack while surfing the nearby area of Troncones Beach in April.

These latest attacks were reported at a beach called Pantla and at Playa Linda beach.

At Pantla Beach, Osvaldo Mata, was reported to have been mauled by a large 6' shark which bit off his hand and gouged his thigh. Apparently his brave friends paddled over and helped him to shore but he died of his wounds before medics arrived.

You can read more about the fatal attack here
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2430753720080524


The second attack, which occurred a couple of days later at Playa Linda, was on Texan Bruce Grimes. According to the news article the shark gave him a quick swim-by and then snagged his arm as he was trying to get back to the beach. After a bit of a struggle Grimes apparently was able get away from the shark and make his way to shore and eventually drive to medical help where he ending up with something close to 100 stitches. (Got to give the man credit for keeping his shit together enough to get to help.)

You can read more about the attack at Playa Linda Here http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN26346680


Man this is crazy...it really seems like 2008 has been a horrible year for shark attacks both domestically and internationally. (If some of you have seen a story about year to year frequency of shark attacks forward it on).

I love animals and nature as much as the next guy (if not more) but I am definitely starting to have issues with humans getting pushed back into the food chain.

2 comments:

evana said...

Hey Adam, I've been blogging about the attacks and came across some good figures and chart about shark attacks and fatalities. In 2007 there were 71 attacks and only 1 fatality. Here's a good graph:

http://surftherenow.com/2008/05/28/local-officials-in-zihuatanejo-and-guerrero-mexico-alarmed-at-recent-attacks/

In general, shark attacks have increased insignificantly especially through the 90s (most likely due to increases in population and water sport activity around the world). The international shark attack file is a great resource for all this info. Here's another post I did on incidence of attacks and on risk of death from shark attacks:

http://surftherenow.com/2008/05/05/more-shark-attacks-global-warming-to-blame/

http://surftherenow.com/2008/05/13/shark-attack-risk-of-death/

Unknown said...

Thanks Evana...these are good posts.