Witnesses describe latest North Carolina shark attack scene

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A shark bit a 68-year-old man several times Wednesday in waist-deep water off North Carolina's Outer Banks, officials said, the seventh in a record-breaking year of shark attacks for the state's coastal waters.

A spokeswoman at the Greenville, North Carolina, hospital where he was taken said Wednesday night that the man, Andrew Costello, was in fair condition.

He suffered wounds to his ribcage, lower leg, hip and both hands as he tried to fight off the animal, said Justin Gibbs, the director of emergency services in Hyde County. The attack happened around noon on a beach on Ocracoke Island, right in front of a lifeguard tower, he said.

"He was pulled under by the shark," said Gibbs.

He was swimming in waist-deep water with his adult son about 30 feet offshore, the National Park Service said in a news release. There were no other swimmers injured.

Costello is a former editor-in-chief of the Boston Herald, the newspaper reported early Thursday.

Costello's niece, Freya Solray, told the newspaper Costello's wife and sons were with him at the hospital, where he was "doing well."

The victim was able to swim closer to shore, where lifeguards helped him out of the water. The shark was grey and about six to seven feet long, officials told CBS Raleigh affiliate WRAL-TV.

Costello is the seventh person attacked along the North Carolina coast in three weeks, the most in one year in the 80 years for which the Florida Museum of Natural History's International Shark Attack File keeps records. The highest previous total was five attacks in 2010. Three of the 52 confirmed shark attacks between 1935 and 2014 were deadly, according to the database.

Most of this year's attacks happened in shallow water. The injuries ranged widely: An 8-year-old boy had only minor wounds to his heel and ankle, while at least two others have required amputation. Another person attacked Saturday had initially been considered at critical risk of dying.

Shark experts say the recent spate of attacks along on the coast of the Carolinas may simply be due to so many more people getting in the water. Americans made 2.2 billion visits to beaches in 2010, up from 2 billion in 2001, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimate.

Shark attacks off North Carolina are rare -- they typically see less than 1 incident per year -- so the 7 over the last few weeks have experts worried, reports CBS News correspondent Don Dahler.

Sam Gruber is the founder and director of the Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas.

"When I first heard of the shark attacks, I was fairly surprised, because I know the Carolinas are not a hot spot for shark attacks," he told CBS News. " ... I think something strange is going on, because the trend is normally a zero or one attacks in that area in any one year. Maybe you get two. ... By strange, I mean its way out of proportion to the average."

The record-breaking numbers of shark bites might be related to an unseasonably hot June that rapidly raised ocean temperatures off North Carolina and prompted fish to migrate north earlier than usual, said Chuck Bangley, a shark researcher at East Carolina University.

"So when you have more marine life in general in the water and then more people heading to the beach than usual, then you've got a potential recipe for accidents to happen," Bangley said.

Roger Rulifson, a distinguished professor of biology and senior scientist at East Carolina University, said recently that there have been reports of small bait fish coming closer to shore this summer, which attracts sharks. There have also been reports of larger numbers of sea turtles along the coast, which sharks also like to eat, he said.

Sarah Cline told WRAL she was in the water when she saw the victim.

"When I got over there, he told me to get out of the water," said Cline, who lives in Chapel Hill. "Like, his swimming trunks were missing."

Cline also noticed that skin was missing from the man's leg. She got out of the water and ran down the beach, yelling for everyone to get out of the water.

"There were kids in the water, and they had boogie boards, and they were at risk too," she said.

Cline then returned to the man, who by then was surrounded by lifeguards and other beachgoers. She held the man's hand.

"We're just very grateful to him, and I felt like the least I could do was to sit and hold his hand," she said.

"This guy's incredible," Cline told the station. "He was talking with me. He was joking with me. And I can't imagine how much pain he must have been in."

• North Carolina sees sixth shark attack in two weeks
• Stay out of the water, N.C. town warns after shark attacks

Lynette Holman, 44, of Boone, said she was on the beach with her husband and 10-year-old son when she noticed a commotion about 50 yards down the beach. She saw a man walking through knee-deep water and then people rushing to help him out of the surf. There was no panic or screaming, and the nearest lifeguard on duty told her she thought the man might have been having heart trouble. Then Holman saw a gash above his knee.

"The skin was pulled away. It was an open-wound gash," said Holman, a journalism professor at Appalachian State University.

Laura Irish Hefty of New Hope, Pennsylvania, said she was about 100 yards away when she saw a crowd gathering. She said her husband, David, saw blood on both of the man's legs.

Costello was treated on the beach for about 20 minutes until he was stabilized and carried off the sand and beyond the dunes to a road, Hefty said. A helicopter flew him to Vidant Medical Center in Greenville, about 85 miles away.

Swimmers were back in the water within a couple of hours, Hefty said.

"Nobody seems to be that scared," she said.