Surfer badly injured in Calif. shark attack

EUREKA, Calif. A 25-year-old surfer is hospitalized in fair condition after apparently being bitten by a shark off the coast of northern California.

The Eureka Times-Standard reports that other surfers attended to the seriously injured man and drove him from the beach to a highway where he was transferred to an ambulance. He was undergoing surgery at a local hospital on Tuesday afternoon.

The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office says the man had a 14-inch bite wound and other injuries on his body. He told a deputy he had been attacked by a shark.

His name has not been released.

"It punctured all the way through," surfer Jason Gabriel told the Times-Standard. "He was going 'Oh my God, oh my God.'"

The attack happened at a popular surfing spot called the North Jetty.

Another surfer, David Hargrave, tells the Times-Standard he heard the bitten man call for help and saw him wade back to shore bleeding heavily.

Last week, a shark attack at an Air Force base beach killed an experienced 39-year-old surfer, following months of frequent shark sightings along the central California coast.

Francisco Javier Solorio Jr., of Orcutt, was bitten in his upper torso while he was surfing with a friend who witnessed the attack. They were in the ocean off the coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base, on Surf Beach in Lompoc, the Santa Barbara County sheriff's department said in a statement.

There have only been 11 confirmed fatal attacks in the United States since 2000, an average of one a year.