Primer Grimes gets bit by a shark

My old friend Bruce Grimes who shaped my boards for several years and I used to surf and skate with got bit by a shark in mexico. Not fun.

Shark attack takes bite out of Grimes

BY HILLARD GROSSMAN • FLORIDA TODAY • May 27, 2008


Bruce Grimes has been designing radical-shaped surfboards for more than 25 years. But Saturday, a shark had designs on the 49-year-old Satellite Beach native while he surfed off the coast of Mexico.
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Surfing in the fishing village of Zihuatanejo, Grimes was bitten by a shark on the hand and "up and down" his arm, according to his mom, Joan, of West Melbourne. A day earlier, a 21-year-old surfer was killed by a shark at a nearby beach.

Initially, an Associated Press story that appeared in Sunday's editions misidentified Grimes as "Greems" and did not disclose his hometown. It also said he had lost his thumb, but that was untrue.

"I was so shocked when I read that story, I thought it had to be him," Joan said Monday. "It was hard to get a call down there, but I finally reached him. He got bit pretty good, but he said he's OK. He didn't want to worry us, so he never called."

Grimes creates Prime Surfboards, using laser technology and geometric shapes.

Zihuatanejo, on the Pacific side, is 152 miles west Acapulco. Next month's X Games surfing contest will take place in Puerto Escondido.

"I remember when he used to surf off (Galveston) Texas, he would be the farthest one out, and I'd worry about him," Joan said. "Now, I'm still worrying about him."







Mexico Navy hunts for sharks after attacks
Mon May 26, 2008 9:41pm BST Email | Print | Share| Single Page| Recommend (0) [-] Text [+] By Noel Randewich

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Mexican Navy searched for sharks in the ocean near Pacific surfing beaches on Monday, after two bathers were killed and another maimed in a rare spate of shark attacks.

Three boats and a helicopter patrolled the sea while Navy and rescue officials scanned the horizon with binoculars from popular beaches around the southwestern Mexican resort of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. They warned surfers not to go far out.

"We've been monitoring the beaches; we've done reconnaissance flights," Rear Adm. Arturo Bernal said, adding that no big shark had been detected yet in the area.

Surfer Bruce Grimes from Texas was bitten on the arm on Saturday off nearby Playa Linda beach, making him the third target of a shark attack in the area in a month.

Two attacks in April and May killed a Mexican and an American -- the first shark deaths off Mexico's Pacific coast in 30 years, according to official records.

Grimes, 49, said he paddled madly toward shore on his board after feeling the unmistakable sandy skin of a shark glide across the bottom of his feet as he straddled his surfboard.

"Then it bumped me really hard. I thought, 'That's definitely a big shark.' I took about three more strokes and he grabbed my arm," said Grimes, who pulled himself free and made it to the beach. He managed to drive himself to a hospital, where he received 100 stitches.

On Friday, Mexican surfer Osvaldo Mata, 21, died after a 6-foot-long (2-m-long) shark seized him, bit off one of his hands and chomped on his thigh. That followed the death in late April of a 24-year-old American who was mauled while surfing nearby.