Surfer survives encounter with shark.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

GOLD BEACH - If he had wrapped his arms around the shark's head, Seth Mead said, he wouldn't have been able to touch his fingers together.

That's how big it was. But Mead never got a glimpse of the rest of the great white shark. He felt only its teeth, tearing into the flesh of his ankle and foot. The shark charged the 26-year-old surfer Monday morning as he sat on his board just south of the Gold Beach south jetty, waiting for his next wave. The force lifted Mead and his surfboard completely out of the water.

The attack was the first since 2002 on the Oregon Coast and only the fifth documented on the Pacific Coast this year.

"He's really lucky," said Laura Stansell, a Gold Beach surfer and friend of Mead's. "The doctor said 15 days and he'll be able to surf again. He just needs to get a new board now."

Never mind his injuries.

"He says it's just a scratch," said Mead's grandmother, Joyce Ternyik of Florence, who received telephone calls from "The Today Show" and media outlets across the country requesting interviews.

"His father says it looks like a power saw accident," she said. "The gal doing the stitching said she has just gotten through doing a Rottweiler bite, and the shark's cuts were so much cleaner."

Mead was resting Tuesday in Gold Beach with stitches closing wounds in his right ankle and foot. Reached by telephone, he said he felt OK but groggy and tired, and declined to talk further.

The day before broke just before 7 a.m. with an idyllic Oregon Coast sunrise and prime surfing conditions at the mouth of the Rogue River. Because the south jetty's rock structure protects waves from the wind and provides a break point, it's a popular spot for local surfers.

But because salmon are spawning in the Rogue River, it's also a popular spot for great white sharks.

Mead, a Florence native who lives in Gold Beach, had gotten into the water with his roommate, Gus Gates, who knows him from Siuslaw High School and Oregon State University, where the two studied fish biology. The two know a lot about sharks, Gates said, and it was easy to tell that this one was a great white.

"It was a classic September sunrise morning," Gates said. "You couldn't ask for better conditions. You and your best friend, head-high surf, light offshore winds. It doesn't get much better than that - minus the shark."

Gates had to leave for work after catching a few waves, which left Mead in the water by himself - something surfers usually try to avoid. He was sitting on his board, waiting for the next set to break when the shark knocked him - board and all - into the air, biting his foot, ankle and board in the same instant.

"He said the board was balancing on the shark's head," Gates said.

Mead screamed at the shark. But before he could utter a coherent phrase, the animal quickly released its grasp and let Mead go, his neoprene boot spurting blood into the chilly water. Seconds later, the next set of waves came and Mead caught one, lying on his stomach on the board - the quickest way he could get to the beach.

He paddled to the beach and was worried that he might not have a foot, he later told his grandmother, so he stood up on it to make sure. Then he drove to the parking lot, where he spotted a Gold Beach police officer who administered first aid and called an ambulance.

Emergency workers at Curry County Hospital stitched up his foot and ankle and released him - with a healthy dose of pain medication.

"There were two gashes on his foot and three on his lower leg, below the knee," said friend Brandon Middleton, who watched him get stitched up. "He seemed to be in pretty good spirits."

This wasn't Mead's first encounter with a shark. In 2001, his friend Tres Tucker wrote to the California-based Shark Research Committee about spotting a white shark at Florence's South Jetty while the two were in the water.

"As I sat upright, my foot planted solidly on something one to two feet below me. It was solid, but slowly sunk under my weight," Tucker wrote.

He had stepped on a shark. He thought to warn Mead, but by the time he spotted his friend, "the look on his face made me turn around to see a very large fin, at least 14 to 16 inches high, passing behind my feet."

That shark didn't attack, however, so the two paddled for safety. "I used to prefer to surf alone," Tucker wrote. "But now I know ... maybe I've never been alone."

Mead's was the third attack on record at Gold Beach, said Ralph Collier, president of the Shark Research Committee.

"More than 60 percent of all shark attacks occur at the location of a previous shark attack," he said.

Shark attacks are scary, Stansell admitted - but they probably won't keep surfers out of the water.

"He'll surf again, I'm sure. It's probably not a good idea to surf alone at a jetty with a lot of fish life around it. But it's hard because there's not too many surfers around here," she said. "My dad gets really mad if I surf alone."

Seth's father Bill Mead said he knew that a shark attack was always a possibility.

"We worried about him before the shark bit him," Bill Mead said.