A 10-year-old boy might have become Hawaii’s seventh and latest shark attack victim of the year Wednesday when he was bitten on the right leg about 30 feet off Makaha Surfing Beach.
The boy, who had been bodyboarding, was taken to a hospital in serious condition after paramedics and lifeguards treated him for trauma shortly before 3 p.m., following an encounter “possibly from a marine animal,” according to an Emergency Medical Services report.
SHARK ATTACKS IN HAWAII IN 2015
Jan. 27, Lahaina, Maui: Fisherman Michael Pollard, 20, was bitten by a 4-foot reef shark he was trying to throw back to sea at 3:30 a.m. He sustained lacerations to his lower left leg.
March 18, Hapuna Beach, Hawaii island: Kansas visitor Dr. Ken Grasing, 58, was attacked at about 11:30 a.m. by an 8- to 10-foot tiger shark about 20 yards from shore, suffering severe laceration to his left forearm, left hand and thigh.
April 29, Ahihi Bay, Maui: Kihei resident Margaret C. Cruse was fatally attacked while snorkeling about 200 yards from shore at about 8:30 a.m. She died after suffering severe lacerations to her right shoulder and underarm, and minor lacerations to her right arm and the right side of her face.
Sept. 20, North Kohala, Hawaii island: Off Upolu Point, Braxton Rocha, 27, was bitten on the leg by a 13-foot tiger shark about 60 yards offshore while spearfishing about 3:30 p.m. He suffered lacerations to his left leg.
Oct. 9, Kawailoa (Leftovers), Oahu: Colin Cook, 25, was sitting on his surfboard at about 10 a.m. when he was attacked by a 10- to 12-foot tiger shark, which severed his left leg below the knee along with a third of his middle finger on his left hand.
Oct. 17, Lanikai, Oahu: Tony Lee, 44, was attacked by a 10- to 12-foot tiger shark at about 11:30 a.m. while swimming 50 to 100 yards offshore, suffering lower leg injuries.
Wednesday, Makaha, Oahu: A 10-year-old boy was bitten on the right leg about 30 feet offshore of Makaha Surfing Beach. This case has not yet been confirmed as a shark attack.
|
Honolulu Emergency Services Department spokeswoman Shayne Enright said it was “a large bite.” Lifeguards quickly applied pressure to stop the bleeding. The boy suffered several puncture wounds, with the most serious injury to the thigh, she said.
Lifeguards using rescue watercraft quickly cleared the ocean of people. They remained on duty until 6:30 p.m.
Beaches were closed and warning sings posted from Keaau to Lahilahi Point, said Deborah Ward, spokeswoman for the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Enright said a man who was surfing at the beach brought the injured boy to shore.
The man, Kelly Krohne, an off-duty lifeguard captain for Oahu’s westside, said the boy suffered a gash on his upper right thigh while about 60 to 70 yards offshore.
Krohne said he happened to be surfing on his day off “when I saw this kid get lifted half a foot in the water.”
“He said, ‘Uncle! Uncle! I got bit!’”
Krohne saw the boy had a big gash to his upper thigh and some injury to his calf.
“Definitely significant injuries,” he said.
“I grabbed him, and I gave a distress signal to the beach,” he said. “We caught the wave. I got swept out a little, but the kid kept going all the way up the beach.
“It was actually luck that the wave came through,” Krohne said. “It would have been a heck of a swim. I gave him a little shove and they said he went right to shore.”
Lifeguards were ready on shore for him and administered treatment.
Krohne said: “He was actually pretty calm. His mom and aunty came over, calming him down.”
Chance Cacatian, 18, of Waianae was lying on the beach when people started screaming and running past him.
“They pulled a young boy onto the quad” vehicle, Cacatian said, and “the lifeguards did their thing on him.”
Enright said Ocean Safety personnel responded earlier that afternoon to a shark sighting at Keaau, where it was feeding on dead pigs. (Sharks are known to eat animal carcasses washed into the sea by runoff.) Enright said they do not know whether it is the same shark.
The Keaau shark was described by lifeguards as 8 to 10 feet long, but there was no good description of the Makaha shark, she said.
Makaha surfer Kelly Uejo, 53, said he has surfed at Makaha Surfing Beach for 20 years and recalls one attack at Cabanas within the last five years, on a tourist in a tube when the water was dirty.
A northwest swell brought big surf to Makaha, churning up the waters.
“When get waves, all the sand is stirred up from the bottom,” causing murky conditions, he said. “They (sharks) mistake, they just going bite.”
He added that in Makaha the river breaks through and mud and debris flow into the ocean.
“You see trees and stuff, lot of sediment. There’s more than sand. There’s the river runoff.”
His wife, Lena Uejo, 46, said the water was dirty from runoff just last week.
“Last week had a sighting, and they closed this beach,” she said.
She said a family refused to get out of the water, and police were called.
She commented that the early-afternoon attack was unusual.
If confirmed, it would be the third shark attack in three weeks on Oahu and the seventh in Hawaii this year:
>> On Jan. 27, a 20-year-old Maui fisherman was bitten by a reef shark while he was trying to throw it back to sea.
>> On March 18, a 58-year-old Kansas man was bitten on the arm by a shark in waters off Hapuna Beach Park on Hawaii island.
>> On April 20, a 65-year-old woman was killed by a shark on Maui.
>> On Sept. 20, a man was bitten on the leg by a tiger shark while spearfishing off the north shore of Hawaii island.
>> On Oct. 9, a 25-year-old man lost his lower left leg to a shark bite while surfing at Leftovers on the North Shore.
>> On Oct. 17, a 44-year-old man was injured by a shark while swimming from the Mokulua Islands and was taken in critical condition to a hospital.
Carl Meyer, a University of Hawaii marine biologist who studies tiger shark movements, has previously said that more people are in Hawaiian waters, which could explain an increase in attacks.
Historically, Hawaii averaged between two and three shark attacks a year in the 1980s. During the past two decades, the annual average edged up to between three and four shark attacks.
