Shark attack not keeping Canadian from friend's Hawaii nuptials

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By ROD MICKLEBURGH
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Not even a weekend shark attack could keep 29-year-old Kyle Gruen of Vancouver from the friend's wedding that brought him to idyllic Maui in the first place.

Not long after undergoing surgery Monday to restore mobility to three fingers of his left hand that were severely damaged in the attack, Gruen was discharged from the hospital and headed to the wedding, where he had been scheduled to be best man.

"I'm not sure whether he will still be best man," said his relieved father, Frank Gruen. "I think they might just give him an easy chair."

In addition to his hand injury, Kyle Gruen suffered puncture wounds to his left thigh.

Gruen said his son was surprised to be released from the hospital so soon after surgery, designed to reattach the severed tendons of his three shark-bit fingers.

"The doctor came in and said, 'What are you still doing here?' He has to go back in a day or two (and) have everything checked out, but as of right now, it's looking good."

Gruen said he talked briefly to his son by cell phone after the surgery on his hand. "He was in a minivan headed off to the wedding. He sounded tired."

Shark experts are mystified by the Saturday afternoon attack. Kyle Gruen was swimming just off a beach on Maui when a shark chomped into his left side.

Amid a pool of his own blood, Gruen hit the shark, twisted away from its powerful jaws and then made it back to shore, despite the deadness in his hand.

"It was big. It was ugly," the athletic water polo and swimming competitor told reporters from his hospital bed.

Archie Kalepa, ocean-safety-operations supervisor for the southwest Maui beaches where the attack took place, said sharks attack most often when waters are murky and around sunrise and sunset.

The shark attack on Gruen occurred in crystal-clear waters shortly before 1 p.m.

"It just goes to show how little we know about what goes on with sharks," Kalepa said.

"You spend all this time studying the circumstances of past incidents and what their habits are. Then you get something like this, and all that information goes out the window."

Randy Honebrink, shark-response coordinator for the state of Hawaii, agreed that the event was unusual.

"It certainly doesn't happen very often in the middle of the day. It just goes to prove that there are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to sharks moving against humans."

Honebrink noted that Gruen was looking at schools of tropical fish through his goggles when he was attacked. "So there were fish in the area and he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Shark attacks on humans are rare in Hawaii, with an average of about four a year, few of them fatal.