Business as Usual--Amid Shark Threats

One swimmer in Alabama has his arm chomped off at the elbow. A few days later, two men motoring across Pensacola Bay report that a fearsome creature with more teeth than sense has ripped a dive platform from their 22-foot boat.

The coastal waters of the Southern United States are teeming with sharks. Always have been. But as the summer gets underway, nothing takes a bite out of tourism quite like a few well-publicized encounters between man and razor-toothed predator.

Stacy Gunnells, 21, admitted that dorsal fins and double rows of incisors were much on her mind as she and a friend prepared to wade into the emerald waters of the Gulf of Mexico last weekend. “But I’m going to swim as I usually do,” said Gunnells, a student at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Ala. “There are sharks out there. But getting bit by one is a pretty rare occurrence.”

Along the 250-mile arc of white sand beaches that stretch from Alabama to the Florida Panhandle--in what is called the Redneck Riviera--the proprietors of hotels, restaurants, T-shirt emporiums and honky-tonk arcades are insisting that business is good. With afternoon temperatures in the 90s, the beaches are littered with sunburned bodies. And hotel bookings for the all-important Fourth of July holiday are strong.

Still, early-season “shark-human interactions,” as scientists call them, have sounded a warning.

They are out there.

“Shark attack is probably the most feared natural danger to man, surpassing even hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes in the minds of most beach users and sailors,” writes George Burgess, curator of the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida.

But as Burgess and other experts point out, swimmers stand a much greater chance of being injured driving to the beach than meeting a shark in the surf. Bees, wasps and poisonous snakes cause more fatalities each year. The risk of death from lightning is 30 times greater than from a shark attack.

Still, sharks are a universal nightmare. And while 25 years has passed since “Jaws” first thrilled moviegoers, the film’s haunting theme music is part of most everyone’s mental soundtrack. Da-dum . . . da-dum, da-dum. . .

Of the 23 shark attacks recorded so far this year, 15 have been in American waters. Two people, both in the South Pacific, were killed.

Last year there were 58 confirmed attacks, with more than two-thirds taking place in the United States. And as usual, Florida led the nation with 25 attacks, while Hawaii recorded five and California two. The last fatality in the U.S. came in 1998, when a shark killed a 9-year-old boy off Vero Beach, Fla.

Shark Struck ‘Like a Torpedo’

While no U.S. deaths from shark bites have been reported this year, Chuck Anderson and Richard Watley came close.

The two Alabama triathletes were on a routine early-morning training swim off Gulf Shores on June 9 when a shark that Watley estimated at 10 feet “came at me like a torpedo.” Seconds earlier, Watley said, he had heard a yell from Anderson, a 44-year-old high school coach who was swimming behind him. In two passes the shark took off Anderson’s right hand and most of his forearm.

The shark--presumably the same animal--then went after Watley.

“I thought I had hit a submerged log,” said Watley, 55, a barber. “It startled me. Then I looked down and there it was, under me.

“I thought, God, it’s over.”

In 12 feet of water, Watley said, he struck the shark on the snout and pushed it away. “But he came back, like a big bully, like it was fixing to eat me.” As Watley swam toward shore, he said, he grabbed the shark by the nose twice more. By the time the encounter was over, he had been bitten three times--in the hand, thigh and knee.

Anderson was released from the hospital last week. Watley says he is going to resume training, despite the realization that “one good bite, some loss of blood and I might not be here.”

Despite that gruesome attack, “sharks still have more to fear from us than we do from them,” said Sonja Fordham of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Marine Conservation. Commercial and recreational fishing kills tens of millions of sharks each year, including many that die after “finning,” in which the dorsal fins are cut off to be used in soups and other foods considered to be aphrodisiacs. (There currently is a push in Congress to ban finning in all U.S. waters.)

Attacks Usually Occur Near Shore

Nonetheless, shark attacks on people are increasing--not because there are more sharks or because they are becoming more vicious, but simply because there are more humans diving into their marine environment. Most attacks occur very close to shore, because that’s where people swim.

Burgess, 50, a biologist, said the Alabama swimmers survived the most common type of attack, a “hit and run” in which the shark mistakes a swimmer’s leg for an easy meal. “There was a strong onshore wind, bait fish in the area, the water was murky and they were swimming at dawn, when sharks are most active,” he said.

Edward Woods, a ranger at Gulf Islands National Seashore, which stretches from Mississippi east to Florida, said that the attention given shark attacks this year has left him fielding more questions from visitors. “People have heard the news, seen the movies, so you’re going to get inquiries. They are out there. But there are all kinds of things out there. It’s a million-to-one shot.”

Danny Rylant, 34, an electrician from Montgomery, knows the odds. “I think getting stung by a jellyfish is a bigger danger than sharks,” he said as he fished last weekend from the city pier in Panama City Beach, Fla. But Rylant, whose family vacations often in the Florida Panhandle, said that he and his wife took a sightseeing helicopter ride a couple of years ago, “and we saw sharks all up and down the beach. My wife was shocked. She doesn’t go in the water too much anymore.”

Jim Overstreet, a Mobile, Ala., police officer and a regular at Pensacola Beach, said that when he wants to swim, he jumps into a pool. “I just don’t trust the ocean. In addition to sharks, there are jellyfish, seaweed, pollution, undertows, all kinds of things you can’t see. Why would you want to go in there? I’m here to have a good time, relax--not to have something nibbling on my leg.”

Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.