An eight-year-old boy whose right arm was bitten off by a shark and retrieved from the predator's throat was recovering from surgery to re-attach the limb, a hospital official said yesterday.
The boy, Jessie Arbogast, was in a critical condition but had begun to regain consciousness and show signs of recognizing his family, Baptist Hospital spokeswoman Ms Pam Bilbrey said.
"He had a good 24 hours. He shows no sign of infection. There's no sign of loss of blood supply or blood flow to the arm, which are all good signs," Ms Bilbrey said.
Jessie was playing in knee deep water on Pensacola Beach at the Gulf Islands National Seashore in north-west Florida at dusk on Friday when a seven foot bull shark bit off his arm between the elbow and shoulder. He also got "a big chunk bitten out of his leg," Ms Bilbrey said.
Jessie's uncle carried him to the shore, where relatives and beach-goers gave him cardiopulmonary resuscitation until he was flown by helicopter to the hospital.
The uncle then wrestled the shark to the beach, where a park ranger shot it four times in the head, causing it to relax its jaws.
The ranger managed to open the shark's mouth with a police baton while volunteer firefighter Mr Tony Thomas reached in and pulled the arm from the shark's throat using a pair of forceps, park officials said.
Emergency workers put the arm on ice and it was re-attached during 11 hours of surgery on Saturday.
Doctors said it was too early to tell if Jessie would regain full use of the limb.
Dr Ian Rogers, the plastic surgeon who re-attached the arm, told a news conference the wound was "remarkably clean" for a shark bite but that Jessie had lost a lot of blood and had no pulse or blood pressure when he arrived at the hospital.
He required more than 30 pints of blood during surgery.
The boy, from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was holidaying in Florida with his family.
Chief park ranger Mr JR Tomasovic said the attack may have been a result of poor visibility in the water. "Sharks have very poor vision," he said. "When it's dark outside or the water is murky, if they see something splashing about they can't identify, they may strike."
The International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida confirmed 79 unprovoked shark attacks on humans worldwide in 2000, and more than a third of those occurred in Florida waters.
Ten of the attacks were fatal, including one in Florida.
This is the worst time of year for encounters between sharks and swimmers along the Gulf Coast and south-east Florida, in part because sharks are hunting along their migratory routes, said Bob Hueter, director of the Centre for Shark Research at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota.