Second Florida shark attack in three days

MIAMI - A 16-year-old boy fishing in waist-deep water off Florida's panhandle was bitten by a shark, the second shark attack along Florida's Gulf coast in three days, officials said.

Craig Hutto, 16, of Lebanon, Tennessee, was rushed by rescue helicopter to a hospital in Panama City, where he was initially in critical condition, officials said. Doctors amputated his right leg, according to media reports.

"The patient has been stabilised. He's no longer critical," said Christa Hild, a spokeswoman for Bay Medical Center. "We're hoping he'll be OK at this point."

The boy was standing in the water on a sandbar with another teenager off Cape San Blas, about 60 miles from where a 14-year-old girl was killed by a shark on Saturday.

"He was fishing about 60 yards offshore, on a sandbar. He had a fish on the line at the time," said Paula Pickett, a spokeswoman for Gulf County.

Authorities closed beaches along a 43-mile stretch of coast in Gulf County for the rest of the day.

In Saturday's attack, Jamie Marie Daigle of Gonzales, Louisiana, was swimming with a friend about 200 yards off the coast near Destin, Florida when she was bitten on the thigh by what officials believe was a six-foot (1.8-meter) bull shark.

A nearby surfer pulled her onto his board and took her to shore but rescue workers were unable to revive her.

Florida recorded about 33 shark attacks yearly, on average, from 2000 to 2003. The number dipped to 12 last year, possibly because a series of strong hurricanes kept swimmers, surfers and divers out of the water and kept the sharks away from the coastline.

Fatal shark attacks are rare. There were seven reported deaths as a result of 61 unprovoked shark attacks recorded worldwide last year, according to the International Shark Attack File, a group at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Worldwide, there were four fatal attacks in 2003, three in 2002 and four in 2001, the group's statistics show. The last fatal attack in Florida was in 2001.

- REUTERS