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,
easily able to 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,
it 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.
