Word: beachings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Splashing in the surf on a sunny afternoon last month, Danielle Shidemantle was 20 yds. from the shore of New Smyrna Beach when she felt piercing pains in her left thigh. She saw blood in the water--her blood. Then she saw the point of a dorsal fin circling back toward her. Not sure what to do--freeze or try to kick it away--she made a frantic run for the beach, screaming, "Shark, shark, shark...
Like other beach resorts, the ones in Volusia County have seen a sharp rise in visitors--to 8.1 million last year, up from 7.2 million in 1989--who come to walk the white beaches, bask in the sun and surf the foamy waves. The more people in the water, the more chance for attacks. "When we enter the ocean, we're not owed a right to be 100% safe," says George Burgess, director of the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida, which collects data on shark attacks. "This is truly a wilderness experience. It's not like...
...born in the spring and learn to hunt by summer. The sharks move close to shore, chasing baitfish as the water temperature warms up. "They get into the surf line and get disoriented, and they start biting whatever moves," says Joe Wooden, deputy chief of Volusia County's beach patrol...
...shark attack is rarely fatal, but it can be terrifying. Training for a triathlon on Gulf Shores Beach, Ala., Chuck Anderson watched in horror as a shark took off his fingertips, then kept coming back. "The fourth time, my right arm went into his mouth, and we went down to the bottom," he says. Anderson fought for his life, with the shark biting up and down on his arm until he heard the bone snap and break off in the shark's mouth. Anderson made it to shore and survived. He doesn't blame the shark for taking...
...foreigners once thought, a bushman. He is a slightly worried guy with a tan, a bald spot, a mortgage, a mower and two kids, whose Australian dream is a double-front brick bungalow on a quarter-acre lot in the suburbs less than 30 minutes' drive from the nearest beach, with two other nice, two-kid, one-PC families on either side...