Shark attacks boy off Ft. Lauderdale
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. A 14-year old boy was bitten by a 8-foot hammerhead shark Friday, September 12, 2008, as he swam in the surf off Ft. Lauderdale Beach. Hospital officials said Jacob Linden was in fair condition Saturday after he received stitches for a foot-long gash in his right thigh.
The shark apparently mauled Linden, then swam off for reasons unknown, fortunately for the boy. Linden, still conscious but in shock, managed to swim back to shore where he was pulled from the water by his friends.
<insert pic: Boy being worked on by paramedics on the beach>
Accident at Sea
A Spanish-Registry vessel, the _Estella Maria_, was lost during the brief Tropical Storm which doused the Glades and Southern Florida with up to 7 inches of rainfall. Listeners at the Port Everglades station reported hearing an explosion in the area near where her last radio message was identified. Due to the severity of the weather, as well as the swift currents in that area, authorities feel that their task to attempt to locate any remaining wreckage will be a long-term one.
U.S. and British fleets are moving through the area, coaming for wreckage. Two additional submersibles have been brought in to augment the search-team’s efforts with their side-looking sonar arrays. The explosion was the cause of the loss of a portion of the Naval listening network, along with a number of unshielded research station monitors, though the Navy liaison states that the coastline was never in any danger as backup systems were in effect within 15 minutes of the blast.
The _Estella Maria_ was carrying containers of LPG as well as industrial quantities of Butane and Napthalene. Dr. Joanna Libsom of the University of Miami was quoted as saying: “Calculations of the force and direction of the blast indicate that the explosion happened all at once, probably from a single incident which destroyed the ship entirely. If it had happened in pieces, we might have hope that some of the crew might have had enough warning to escape. As it is, the force would have been like one huge bomb going off – like a nuke without the radiation.” The investigation is expected to continue as more equipment can be diverted from the Bermuda Interdiction Zone.