Sarasota College Student Bitten By Bull Shark (CBS4) SARASOTA A Sarasota college student is going to have some serious scars, but she's planning on wearing them as badge as a shark attack survivor.
20-year old Andrea Lynch and a group of friends headed into Sarasota bay at night to go swimming and to check out a special algae that lights up only at night.
The New College students had been to the spot many times before, and took a dinghy out to an anchored sailboat. Lynch said she was floating on her back in the water when she was attacked.
"They were definitely teeth. I felt them all around me,¡¨ said Lynch, ¡§yeah they definitely felt like a shark."
Lynch scrambled back onto the sailboat with two other friends who pressed shirts against her wounds and called 9-1-1.
"I reached around and felt all these gashes in my side,¡¨ said Lynch, ¡§and when I touched them, I could feel a lot of hot blood pouring out of them."
And what was turning into a really bad night got worse. The dinghy they had used to get to the sailboat had floated off, and they were stranded.
A rescue boat did arrive within a half-hour - taking Lynch to Sarasota Memorial Hospital - where doctors brought in a plastic surgeon who used more than a hundred stitches on the torn layers of skin and muscle.
Looking at pictures of the bite, marine experts think Lynch was attacked by a 6-foot bull shark.