Second shark attack off California coast

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http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/...a-coast/nSrzX/

Posted: 2:22 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012
KTVU and Wires
EUREKA, Calif. —
For the second time in less than a week, a surfer has been attacked by a shark in waters along the California coast.
Humboldt County Sheriff's Lt. Steve Knight said his agency got a call at 12:11 p.m. reporting that a man had been bitten by a shark off the North Jetty near Eureka.
Witnesses told the Eureka Times Standard that the man was able to get to shore on his own, but was badly bleeding from abdominal injuries.
An emergency medical technician who was at the beach immediately began caring for the man who had suffered wounds from his ribs to below his hips.
He was rushed to a local hospital with what authorities were calling life-threatening injuries.
The attack comes less than a week after 39-year-old Francisco Javier Solorio Jr. of Orcutt was killed in a great white shark attack in the waters off Surf Beach in Santa Barbara County – hundreds of miles to the south from Eureka.
Solorio was bitten in the upper torso and died at the scene despite a friend's efforts to save him.
The beach, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, also was the site of an October 2010 fatal attack. Lucas Ransom, a 19-year-old student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, died when a shark nearly severed his leg as he body-boarded.
There have been nearly 100 shark attacks in California since the 1920s, including a dozen that were fatal, according to the California Department of Fish and Game. But attacks have remained relatively rare even as the population of swimmers, divers and surfers sharing the waters has soared.
An average of 65 shark attacks happen each year around the world that typically result in two or three deaths, according to the Pew Environment Group.
Some sharks come closer to shore from around October to January because that is when some of their favorite prey -- nutritious, blubber-rich seals and elephant seals -- are abundant on land, said Sean Van Sommeran, executive director of the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in Santa Cruz.