Possible shark attack leaves Canadian in intensive care

She introduced herself as Nicole from Canada while joining an 11 a.m. pick-up game of beach volleyball at her Cancun resort Monday.

After about three matches, it was approaching noon. Nicole said she couldn’t stay for another; she had to go snorkeling in five minutes in the cool blue ocean outside of Cancun Caribe Park Royal Grand resort in Mexico, said teammate Angela Nelms from Chesapeake, VA.

Minutes later, screams rang out about 50 metres from the beach. Ms. Nelms and her friends didn’t hear them, so they continued playing, little knowing their new Canadian friend was in the midst of a shark attack, her arm and leg severely chewed by a vicious fish that had swum uncomfortably close to shore.

Help arriving on jet skis quickly grabbed their attention.

“My friend Alex [another volleyball player] saw someone on jet skis pulling a lady,” she said. “Her leg was bitten and her arm was bitten. We didn’t want to see it. Another friend, Shawna, had said [the woman’s] arm was bitten to the point you could see her arm bone and the femur in her thigh.”

Only later, from hotel staff, did they learn it was the friendly 38-year-old tourist in a black bikini.

A statement released by Dr. Italo Sampablo, medical director at Hospiten Cancun, a private local hospital that caters to tourists, said the woman was admitted to hospital suffering severe injuries to her left arm and thigh shortly before noon on Monday.

Dr. Sampablo said the woman’s forearm and hand had been mangled by what appeared to be bites from a “marine animal.”

According to the statement, which did not name the woman but only referred to her by her two initials, N.M., she remains in hospital in intensive care. Local newspaper reports have referred to the woman by a variety of different names, including Nicole Ross, Nicole Ruth and Nicole Ruth Wood.

Dr. Sampablo told Postmedia News on Monday the woman’s injuries were not life-threatening and that she was expected to recover.

“We’ve not had this kind of incident here previously,” he said, saying shark attacks are rare for Cancun and the Mayan Riviera.

The last recorded shark attack occurred in May 2008 when two people were killed in the west coast town of Zihuatanejo.

The woman is believed to have been staying at the Cancun Caribe Park Royal, which scheduled the pick-up volleyball game for guests, said Ms. Nelms.

Some reports have suggested the attack occurred after a female shark swam in to shore to give birth and became aggressive when a large group of swimmers approached to take pictures.

The Diario de Yucatan newspaper quoted Mario Castro, head of Cancun’s civil protection office, as saying that sharks are mating in the area and swimmers should exercise caution when going into the water.

That was news to 20-year-old Ms. Nelms and her mother Kathy, who said she heard the screams from the resort’s pool side. There wasn’t any warning that a shark could have been swimming so close to shore at this time of year, she said.

Only after the incident did the hotel hoist red flags, keeping swimmers out of the water. The attack did not take place within buoyed areas set up for safe swimming, but out in the open water, she said.

News of the incident lit up Internet discussion boards and travel advisory websites. One commenter, going by the tag “jessjas2001” wrote on the website tripadvisor.com that they were the first to the scene.

“The girl was missing most of her arm and a large portion of thigh ... she was losing a lot of blood,” the commenter wrote. “I had to wrap a towel around her leg ... It took life guards about 10 minutes to get to her. She was awake and talking but fading fast due to blood loss. I’m not sure how she possibly could have survived.”

Cancun public safety officials have not yet ruled whether the woman’s injuries were caused by a shark, but were reportedly trying to find the animal responsible.