His name is Jesse Arbogast and it happened right here on our beach. His father was shark fishing at night off the beach, which is a stupid thing to do, but I digress. They were from MS and were here on vacation. His son ventured into the water and was attacked by a bull shark. It took his right arm off nearly at the shoulder. His father jumped into the surf, wrestled the boy from the shark's mouth and pulled him to shore. A park ranger shot and killed the shark. His son essentially bled out on the beach but was life-flighted to Sacred Heart here in town and the docs managed to reattach his arm and save his life. One of the surgeons, an orthopaedist, is a neighbor and good friend of mine. He is however, permanently brain damaged due to the blood loss. Bulls inhabit our beaches by the hundreds, however they do not have a reason to venture inshore because there is plenty offshore to eat. But people started shark fishing off our pier, chumming the water, which is epic stupidity, which brought the sharks in and we had two attacks in a month. After the attack on Jesse, shark fishing off our pier or shore was banned. If you do hook into a shark fishing off the pier, which can happen from time to time, you are required by law to cut the line.
People always want to blame ths sharks, which is a sign of pure ignorance and stupidity on their part, in my opinion at least. The sharks were just doing what they do best, EAT (and make little baby sharks). It was HUMANS who created this dangerous situation. Sharks are absolutely amazing creatures and I love diving with them. I consider the dive a waste if we do not see some. You just have to know how they behave and not do anything stupid. In over 40 years of diving I have only had 1 or 2 close calls. And that includes diving with sand, tiger, bull, hammerhead, dusky, white and black tip, blue and mako sharks.
