Researchers seek return of shark tooth

When he returned to his home town of Baden, Austria, after an eventful vacation, Armin Trojer took a little piece of Florida with him: a tooth fragment from the shark that nearly severed his ankle while he was swimming near the lighthouse on July 1.

The tooth was apparently given to Trojer by the surgeons who operated on him at Lee Memorial Hospital. Now, scientists at the University of Florida's Program for Shark Research and International Shark Attack File would like to get it back, at least for a little while.

"He probably took it as a souvenir," said George H. Burgess, the program's director. "The timing was bad. The attack happened on a Friday, Monday was a holiday and I had to hit the road Tuesday to attend some meetings.

"My staff started making calls about the tooth Tuesday morning, but by the time they got back to the physicians, Trojer had been released with the tooth. The prospects of getting it back are reduced now he's back in his own country, but one of my assistants speaks German, and we will be composing letter to him in German, once we locate his actual address."

Trojer, 19, was standing in chest-deep water when, around 11:30 a.m., he felt a tug on his ankle. He hobbled to the beach, where his father Werner and other beachgoers saw blood streaming down his foot.

One woman called 911 on a cell phone while a nurse from Arcadia rushed to Trojer's aid, applying a tourniquet until EMS personnel arrived. Trojer was airlifted to the hospital.

As the third shark attack on a Florida beach in one week, Trojer's misfortune received worldwide attention. Over 150 German-language articles about it appeared on the World Wide Web, most of them repeating the same news wire story.

The other two attacks, which occurred in the Florida Panhandle, killed a 14-year-old girl and caused a 16-year-old boy to lose his leg.

If the fragment can be recovered, Burgess said, and if it is large enough, he and his colleagues may be able to determine what species of shark bit Trojer.

"Different shark species have different shapes of teeth," Burgess explained. "The angle of the tooth coming out of gums and the serrations on its edge are all very helpful in determining species.

"Usually we don't get tooth fragments from most bites, just if it hits bone. It breaks when the shark moves its head. It's lucky for us, not for the victim."

While it may be moot to Trojer, Burgess said it's important for the scientific community to determine what species of shark was involved, to see if species was a factor in why the attack occurred.

"Both outcomes and styles of attack are related to the species," Burgess said. "It's unlikely Trojer was attacked by a bull shark. His injuries would have been a whole lot worse, I think."

What happened to Trojer mostly fit a "typical shark attack pattern for Florida," Burgess said. He described it as a "hit and run" event on the east coast, a quick grab or slash and no return engagement, leaving wounds below the knee on the foot.

The typical victim is a Caucasian surfer, 15 to 30 years old, in the surf zone. Such an attack usually does not result in severe injuries, just lacerations or puncture wounds. It requires sutures but there's no loss of tissue or function.

"The shark mistakes the surfer's foot for the activity of a normal prey item," Burgess explained. "The ones in the Panhandle and on Boca Grande were unique. They were non-surfers, the geographic location was the Gulf rather than the east coast, and the first two cases were severe injuries with multiple bites."

Burgess suspects the shark that attacked Trojer was a black tip, since they were traveling through the area and have been implicated in attacks on the east coast.

The frequency of shark attacks is dictated by human activity, Burgess said.

"As humans go into the water in record numbers, dictated by the continuous rise in population and increased interest in aquatic recreation, the time spent in the sea on activities often provocative to sharks increases," he warned. "Each decade has more attacks than the previous one, and this trend will continue to rise in future.

"We're flooding sharks out of their own environment. If the trend continues, all you guys in the news business will be writing about will be shark attacks. There's unparalleled media interest, a scramble for a sound bite on every half-hour news show.

"It's on the air ad nauseum. It gets beat into ground."

Source: www.bocabeacon.com