A Case of Mistaken Identity | Shark vs Surfer

Marjorie was likely bitten by a tiger shark, one of the main culprits of shark attacks on surfers in Hawaii. Tiger sharks tend to be solitary hunters. They're feeding on large prey items, and they have the jaws and the hardware that enable them to take those big prey items. But they're also not picky—they'll eat whatever they can. Known as the "garbage can of the ocean," the tiger shark has the hardware to chew up anything it finds—even license plates and old tires.

So here you have a site of jaws from about a 12-foot tiger shark, and you can see the numbers of teeth that are here and the size of the teeth. They're big, they're heavily serrated—even the serrations have serrations on them. As that jaw's moving, it's slicing across, and these become little blades like on a chainsaw. Not only do they have lots of teeth, they have lots of replacement teeth behind, so they always have a full set of teeth rolling in.

When they encounter soft, squishy humans, they can easily get severely damaged by such strong, powerful jaws. On Marjorie's sunset surf, time and location worked against her. Tiger sharks are nocturnal hunters, and she was surfing in an area inhabited by sea turtles. So a shark swimming along toward dusk or at night sees something vaguely on the surface; it's going to come up and investigate it.

You're sitting on this board with your arms off to the side, which look like little flippers, and a shark coming up from below might mistake this person on a board for a turtle that's flapping around and give you an investigatory bite.