Shark attack victim died from massive blood loss

Stephen Schafer kiteboarding in 2007. Photo by Chris Shultz

STUART — One shark, not several, attacked and killed kiteboard surfer Stephen Schafer south of Stuart Beach this week, a University of Florida professor called by authorities to examine the victim’s body said Friday.

A preliminary examination by George Burgess, director of UF’s Program for Shark Research, determined the bite was made by a species of requiem shark. That is a large family of mostly tropical sharks.

The fish’s size, estimated by Burgess at 8 to 9 feet, eliminates many smaller species included in the family known to scientists as Carcharhinidae.

The family does not include great white sharks, he said, which are in the mackerel shark family.

Burgess said a closer examination of bite mark photographs may determine which species is responsible.

“Two of the likely possibilities are a bull shark or a tiger shark,” Burgess said, adding that a third possibility is a dusky shark.

Burgess said it will be 10 days or more before he might determine the species involved, and warned that the species is never determined in a most of cases.

Shark research scientist Grant Gilmore of Vero Beach and Burgess have been in contact. It was Gilmore who concluded the Treasure Coast’s only other recorded fatal shark attack — a 9-year-old boy killed in 1998 while in shallow water north of Jaycee Park in Vero Beach — was done by a 6-foot juvenile tiger shark.

Both Burgess and Gilmore said tiger sharks have teeth that are different from bull and dusky sharks. Tigers have identical serrated teeth in both upper and lower jaws, while the other two species have serrated teeth above and puncturing teeth below.

Burgess said microscopic examination and other tools may determine the species.

Gilmore has not had the opportunity to examine the bite wounds on Schafer, so he would not speculate on what species of shark was involved.

He did note that female dusky sharks reach 9 to 10 feet in length and give birth along Treasure Coast beaches.