Shark-bite survivors lobby to protect their attackers

The attack survivors are in Washington to lobby for a Senate bill that would outlaw shark "finning" -- a practice where fishermen slice off a shark's fin and toss the rest of its carcass overboard -- in U.S. waters. The bill has passed the House and has the support of federal fisheries managers, who say it would make existing shark protections easier to enforce.

It won't save the world's shark populations: Scientists say finning is largely done by overseas fishing crews. In the United States, it is already outlawed in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico and has been largely curtailed in the Pacific.

Debbie Salamone was walking in waist-deep water at Cape Canaveral National Seashore when a shark seized her heel, severing the Achilles' tendon. She had been a committed environmentalist before the attack, but afterward, "if they proposed to pave over half the ocean for a strip mall and a parking lot, I would have been fine with it," she said.

But now she works full time at the Pew group and says she came to see the attack as a deep, gory test of her resolve to help the environment. Including -- maybe especially -- the parts of it that bite.