Shark Attacks Woman Off Maui

A shark tore open the flesh of a California woman off the shore of a Maui resort, but she bravely swam to safety without being seriously hurt.

Julie Glance, a 34-year-old bank executive from San Diego, said she had been in the water about 10 minutes on Sunday morning when something struck her shoulder.

"It felt like he collided with me," she said in an interview from her room at Maui Memorial Medical Center, where she was listed in satisfactory condition Monday.

Glance was bitten on the right shoulder, forearm and wrist. Screaming, she tried to get ashore.

"She was just screaming, 'Help, help, help,"' Steve Bona, a Minnesota visitor, told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

He said the shark was gray and 8 to 10 feet long.

"I pulled my arm against my stomach very tight because it was very badly gashed," Glance said. "And I swam on my back in part of the way."

Glance says all she could think about was getting away because she has two young children.

Bona eventually helped Glance onto his board and ashore, blood dribbling into the water along the way.

A doctor and nurse who were in the area treated the woman until paramedics arrived.

"The doctors say it's pretty miraculous that I wasn't more damaged," she said.

Glance says 14 tendons were severed but she should recover about 90 percent function after rehabilitation.

It was the second shark attack on Maui in less than a month. The incident closed a mile-long stretch of beach until noon on Monday. Shark warning signs remained posted a mile in either direction of the attack to alert water enthusiasts of possible danger.

After another Maui shark attack earlier this year, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources installed a number of permanent shark warning signs on Olowalu, a popular beach.

Glance said she wished those signs were put up near Kaanapali.

"If I would have known there was an attack two weeks ago I think I would have not gone out there," she said.

The International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville lists the Maui incident as the 52nd worldwide shark attack worldwide this year, including six in Hawaii.

By Matt Sedensky