Shark Attacks

A surfer was killed Wednesday morning in a shark attack off western Maui, the first confirmed fatal attack in Hawaii in nearly 12 years, police said. Willis McInnis, 57, was helped out of the water, but died on the shore despite rescue efforts by beachgoers, police and paramedics. He was bitten in the leg and suffered severe blood loss, police Capt. Charles Hirata said. He said the bite on McInnis was 12 to 14 inches wide, indicating that it was probably a large shark.

Shark attacks worldwide have declined in recent years as people get shark-savvy. But this may not be the good news it seems: It may mean human attacks on sharks are wiping the creatures off the planet, one report suggests. The University of Florida's International Shark Attack File reports shark attacks dropped from an all-time high of 79 in 2000 to 55 last year. Shark file director George Burgess thinks the danger is diminishing.

Shock and horror on Halloween, the day a tiger shark attacked Bethany Hamilton while she paddled her surfboard, gave way to sadness. But now, Hamilton, 13, a promising young athlete who lost her left arm in the attack off Kauai, Hawaii, is smiling again, friends say. A week ago, she wandered from her hospital room for the first time. She visited a young patient suffering with a tumor, to see if she could lift her spirits. She also met a blind man and expressed a desire to help him.

Friends and family of the 13-year-old surfing star who lost her left arm in a shark attack last week off Kauai have set up a Web site to allow people to track her progress. The site -- www.bethanyhamilton.com -- reported that Bethany was in stable condition at Wilcox Memorial Hospital on Kauai. Her arm, bitten off near the shoulder, was not recovered and the shark has not been spotted again.

California's first fatal shark attack since 1994 occurs and in its wake comes the inevitable ripple effect.... A day after Tuesday's deadly attack on Deborah Franzman, by a great white as she was swimming near seals and sea lions off Avila Beach near San Luis Obispo, a Santa Maria angler said he saw the same shark in the same general area nearly two weeks ago as he and a friend were trolling for halibut. The shark was estimated at 15 to 18 feet by state marine biologist Robert Lea.

It was a 15- to 18-foot great white shark that attacked and killed a sociology professor who died very quickly from her catastrophic wounds, authorities said Wednesday. Deborah Blanche Franzman, 50, received a large bite to her left side near the hip, and another on the lower part of her right leg, according to state marine biologist Robert Lea, an expert for the California Department of Fish and Game who was present at the autopsy.

A shark attack near here had an assistant Santa Rosa city attorney recovering in a hospital Friday after surgery on his badly bitten legs. Michael J. Casey, 48, was bodyboarding Thanksgiving Day off Salmon Creek Beach when a 16-foot shark latched on and thrust him into the air. Yells from nearby surfers may have made the shark let go. "He still has all his fingers and toes," said his wife, Maureen, "but I think he's a little bummed, because he had a whole surf weekend planned."

I'm struggling for the glad heart to raise a daughter in this cockeyed, chilling summer of 2002. I can protect her, or so I tell myself. The odds are with me. But I'm not so sure I can protect her childhood. The odds of that grow longer all the time. We throw fences around our little girls, our boys too. We don't let them venture beyond our gaze, and maybe not even that far. Their movements, we plan. Their activities, we supervise.

Gliding about in a murky quarantine tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific lurks one lucky shark. Barely visible in the bubbly water, the sand tiger shark will soon join about 150 other creatures in a $3-million, 10,000-square-foot exhibit at the Long Beach aquarium.