Hawaii Shark Attack

(Maui, Hawaii) In the seventh shark attack in Hawaiian waters this year, a 20-year-old woman from Germany had her right arm bitten clean off yesterday. The attack occurred while the woman was snorkeling at Palauea Beach.

"We heard screaming from the water and it was this unbelievable scream like I've never heard before," witness Andree Conley-Kapoi told MauiNow. "I stopped working and I said the only time anybody would scream like that would be if they were being attacked by a shark."

"We saw a number of people saying 'oh my god, look at all that blood,'" said witness Josh Craddock. "I couldn't actually see the blood at that stage. She was maybe 60 or 70 yards out from the beach."

The woman is in critical condition at the Maui Memorial Medical Center. She lost a lot of blood.

As an aside, four decades ago I was stationed for two years in Hawaii while in the military and one of the first things I learned was that news of shark sightings and shark attacks, even false alarms, ride swift horses in the islands. Given that, I recall no sensational news of shark events, only false alarms.

The frequency of recent Hawaiian shark events seems to indicate some sort of step change. Maybe the reporting is better or maybe there are simply more sharks interacting with more people. Or maybe my memory is foggy.