Photos by THOMAS BENDER

SARASOTA -- The shark bit Andrea Lynch as she floated on her back in a dark Sarasota Bay, sinking its teeth in her side until they hit her ribs and pelvis, then shaking her briefly before letting her go.

Lynch, 20, said her three friends from New College thought she might be joking or mistaken when she told them a shark just attacked her.

"I got on the boat and my friend was like, 'Do I need to call 911?'" Lynch said. "I reached back with my hand and felt all these gashes on me, and there was blood running down my body and pooling in the boat."

It is only the seventh reported unprovoked shark bite in Sarasota County since 1882, and the second one this year, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Lynch said she has muscle tears and tissue damage, and a doctor put more than 100 stitches in her body during a three-hour surgery Thursday.

Lynch took photos of her bites to Mote Marine Laboratory shark expert Bob Hueter on Friday afternoon to see if he could tell how large the shark was or what species it was.

Hueter estimated it was a bull shark about six feet long.

The conditions on Wednesday night were perfect for seeing the marine phenomenon of bioluminescence, Lynch said. The friends took an inflatable dinghy out to a New College-owned boat anchored 200 yards out in the bay.

The boat was isolated, the wind was light and there was little light other than the green glow from the algae when the swimmers or other fish stirred the water.

Those are also excellent conditions for a shark bite, experts say.

One friend was swimming with Lynch when she screamed, and two were standing in the boat. When she pulled herself out of the water, the friends planned to go back to shore.

But in the chaos, the inflatable dinghy floated away. Nobody wanted to jump back in the water to bring it back.

They had no way back to shore.

"It was like a horror movie," Lynch said.

They called 911.

It took four hands pressing shirts against the wounds to get the bleeding under control. A rescue boat arrived about 20 minutes later to take Lynch to Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

There were 17 puncture wounds stretching in a crescent on Lynch's side. Doctors told her the teeth that pierced between her ribs got close to her lungs, but missed all of the major organs.

"Either it didn't like the taste of human, or it hit my bone and thought I was too bony," said Lynch, a former biology major who now studies international relations.

Either way, Lynch and her friends say they are not planning to swim in the bay at night anymore.

SHARK BITES IN SARASOTA

There were 545 confirmed shark bites in Florida from 1882 through 2006, with 13 fatalities, according to the International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida.

That includes seven bites in Sarasota County, four bites in Manatee County and one bite in Charlotte County.

The most recent occurrence in this area was in June, when a French tourist was bitten on the foot as she swam at Turtle Beach on Siesta Key.

In April 2005, a 70-year-old woman wading in waist-deep water off Crescent Beach was bitten on her calf.

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