Do you really want to know that a shark attacked someone just downwind of Kitebeach? Well, it happened and there are more out there too. So, what do you do? Keep your heart rate down, don't swim, surf or kite in the red water and keep cool, stay verticle and hopefully everything will be fine. This shark story only took a few hours before it circulated through the island. So...... Here's how it went down, as told by Kai Barger:
"It was a northeast swell so we went to Ledges, and it was actually my first time surfing out there. It's a shifty, slingshot-type of wave. We scored it in the morning and then it turned onshore so we went to eat and then came back.
Dusty [Payne], Granger [Larson], Tanner [Hendrickson] and I paddled back out after lunch. And out of nowhere these two bodyboarders came out. They almost looked out-of-place being out there. They had a hard time catching waves. They ended up going about 20 yards out-the-back to try and roll into a few.
Dusty had just broken his board and was swimming in and then we hear this kid screaming bloody murder. We thought they saw a shark and we started talking about it, 'cause Tanner saw a shark there a few days before. But we looked outside and they were 20 to 30 yards out-the-back and weren't waving us down for help or anything. They were stuck in the rip and didn't get in to us for like five minutes.
When they got closer, we asked them, "What's the deal? Did you see a shark?" And they're like, "No, we got attacked." I didn't believe it, so I asked to see. And the kid lifted up his leg and his flipper was completely gone and his foot was a full-on hamburger patty. I go, "OK, we gotta go in."
Because he had a rubber fin on, we all got away with it. If it had been anyone of us, we'd have no foot right now."
-- Kai Barger
"His friend couldn't help much on his bodyboard, so it was pretty much up to Tanner and I. The kid looked like he was in a state of shock. He looked like he saw a ghost. But he was actually surprisingly calm. He wasn't screaming or crying or anything.
This kid had been bleeding for almost 10 minutes at that point but we couldn't really put a tourniquet on him in the water because of all the waves rushing. So he grabbed both our leashes and we paddled as hard as we could to the beach. The whole way in we talked him through it, like, "You're going to be OK. You just survived a shark attack. You're still going to have a foot."
When we got him to the beach, I ripped off my leash and tied the tourniquet right above his knee. He had a pretty nasty cut going all the way up his shin. His friend's dad called the ambulance. We elevated his leg on his boogieboard. We were right in town so the ambulance came right away.
Lucky thing, he had a big rubber fin on his foot. I think that's what saved his foot. The shark probably didn't like that and moved on. It was almost like that kid sacrificed himself."
Today, there were more sightings off Kanaha, enough that lifeguards had removed all the surfers, yet suspiciously not the SUPers.
Aloha and Good Luck
