Second Lead for Meeting Story

A shark has been caught and killed by fishermen this morning off Amity Island, just two days after a local girl was found mauled by a shark and a boy was attacked by a shark off Village Beach. 

Amity Police Chief Martin Brody said today that the shark, which was killed one mile south-southwest of Amity, is the one that claimed the lives of Chrissie Watson, 17, and Alex Kintner, 10, two days ago. 

“Of course all the beaches throughout our beautiful island will reopen immediately,” Chief Brody said.  “Swim and have fun!” 

Chief Brody also mentioned that after the shark was brought ashore it was identified to be a nurse shark by Matt Hooper, a marine biologist from the Woods Hole, Mass., Oceanographic Institute.  Nurse sharks are “among the most brutal and dangerous of all sharks,” Chief Brody said.

Although Chief Brody assured residents they could go back in the water, he mentioned that there would still be shark spotters in the area.

Amity Beaches Closed in Light of Shark Attacks

Amity Police are taking special precautions, including closing Amity’s beaches, in order to try to prevent further shark attacks after a local girl was found mauled by a shark yesterday morning and a boy was attacked by a shark yesterday afternoon. 

At last night’s Amity Board of Selectmen meeting, held at Town Hall at 6 p.m., Police Chief Martin Brody told citizens in attendance that, in light of the deaths of Chrissie Watson, 17, and Alex Kintner, 10, whose body still has not been found, the police were going to “put on an extra number of summer deputies” and employ “shark spotters.”  

The meeting commenced with a tizzy of voices yelling out over each other, and Mayor Larry Vaughn could hardly get people to quiet down in order to ask if there were “any special questions.”  

One citizen of Amity asked Brody if the police was going to close the beaches, to which Chief Brody responded, “We are.”

This was met with an uproar as a number of Amity citizens in the audience yelled out at Brody in anger.  Multiple people who showed up at the meeting were owners of businesses that rely on the numerous amount of tourists that come to Amity to vacation on the beaches. 

Mayor Vaughn reassured citizens that the beaches would only be closed for 24 hours, even though Chief Brody had not put a time limit on his own statement. 

One fisherman inquired into the $3,000 reward advertised by the Kintner family for whoever could capture and kill the shark, to which Mayor Vaughn responded that anyone with questions of that nature should get in touch with the Kintner family.  Marion Kintner, who was at Village Beach when her son was attacked, is currently being treated for shock at Amity General Hospital.

In the midst of the commotion, a fisherman named Quint who was sitting at the back of Town Hall suddenly ran his nails down a chalk board to get the room’s attention.  Quint said he could catch the shark, but he would only do so for $10,000.

Mayor Vaughn nodded his head and said, “We’ll take it under advisement.” 

Quint then left the room, and the Mayor declared that the meeting was over.

On New Hampshire Coasts there Is "Virtually No Risk" for Shark Attacks

            Visitors flocking to New Hampshire beaches this summer can swim without concern, even in light of the recent shark attacks off Amity Island that killed two locals.

            “Historically the level of risk of a shark attack off New Hampshire is zero,” said Tony LaCasse, Media Relations Director for the New England Aquarium and an alumni of the University of New Hampshire. “In fact, there’s virtually no risk at any time.”

            LaCasse said this is because one of the most common species of sharks that provoke attacks on humans, the great white shark, does not have a regular habitat off New Hampshire.  Great white sharks are normally spotted where large seals, their main food source, live in high densities and are easy to reach.  While New Hampshire does have a seal population, is it low density, and the seals are smaller in size. 

            “While you could have great white sharks traversing the area, the food just isn’t there,” LaCasse said.

            This concern about sharks in New England waters has increased after two Amity Island locals, Chrissie Watson, 17, and Alex Kintner, 10, were killed in shark attacks in the past two days.  Watson’s body was found mauled this morning on South Beach after she went missing while swimming the night before.  Later in the day, Kintner was attacked off the crowded Village Beach, but his body has not been recovered at this time.

            The last time a fatal shark attack was recorded in Massachusetts was 1936, and, before today, only three total attacks have ever been recorded in the state, according to the International Shark Attack File website.  New Hampshire has never had an attack reported off its coast.   

            LaCasse said surfers are the ones most at risk to be attacked by a great white shark off New Hampshire because their surf boards resemble large seals or sea lions.  However, there is “almost no chance” of this because great white sharks exit these northern waters by late autumn and the best surfing is normally during wintertime.

            The two most common sharks in New England during the summer are the porbeagle and the blue shark.  However, LaCasse said the only recorded incidents with porbeagles have involved divers and he is not aware of any incidents involving blue sharks attacking humans. 

Looking Ahead

This semester I've finally realized my passion.  Long before this year I knew I loved to write but I didn't know how I would incorporate this interest into my future.  My freshman and sophomore years of college I tried out a lot of different subject areas, all of which sounded interesting to me, and it was really hard to pick the one I wanted to stick with.  Early on I decided on Spanish as at least one major because I was already so far through the major and I loved the language, but I wanted to pick a second major, and last year that was English Teaching.  However, after I took EDUC 500, I decided to drop the major, realizing that I did not want to teach right out of college.  Then I decided to give journalism a try my junior year.  I had never written for a newspaper before and only had taken an introductory journalism course in high school in which the teacher wasn't the best.  However, I have always loved reading the news and being up to date, and the prospect of journalism intrigued me.  Suffice to say, I have made the right choice, and it's nice that after this semester I finally feel confident in what I want to do.  I have interests in a lot of subject areas, but after a week of starting this news writing course, I got that feeling you only get when you truly know this is the field for you.  It's exciting, and now I just want to put all my energy into becoming the best news writer I can be, and I love finally having some certainty and a goal to work towards.  Also, after taking Tom Haines class, I'm even more excited about going into this field because, contrary to what many are saying about it, it is actually flourishing in the internet age, and I can't wait to be a part of such an experimental time.  I don't know whether I'm going to go into magazine writing or newspaper writing or freelance or public relations, but I just want to continue to write about a whole host of issues and topics and continue to tell stories about what intrigues me in order to share my curiosity of the world with others.

Reflecting on this Semester

Today in class we practiced our news writing skills by creating a fake breaking news story based on events in the movie Jaws.  Throughout the semester it's been a challenge trying to write succinct, inverted pyramid news stories, especially when for so long we've been trained to write essays or narratives.  While bits and pieces of essay and narrative writing can be used in news writing, it is really something all of its own and something you really just have to get used to.  That's why it was quite nice to get this assignment today because I've realized the progress I have made this semester.  Once we got the press release, I automatically zeroed in on the the most important details that should go in the lead or near the top of the story and I was able to pretty quickly bang out eight paragraphs.  As I was writing the story with such ease, I began to see how much I've grown in this class and how this formula for writing a news story has become second nature to me.  I enjoy this writing because it is very logical and it is almost like a puzzle where you have to put all the pieces together just right for it to make sense to the reader.  It's kind of like writing poetry with constraints; while some may view writing sonnets to be more constricting, those rules for rhyme and rhythm actually push the writer to be more creative in order to work within the constraints.  I think that news writing also allows for a similar creativity.  While it certainly will never compete with fiction (something I think the majority of people prefer to read), news writing forces the writer to think very analytically in order to get the news out to the public in the most concise, precise way possible, and I'm excited to continue to take on this challenge beyond this class in my future journalism career.

Second Lead

A local boy has been killed in what appears to be a shark attack at 2 p.m. today at Village Beach, just hours after a local teenage girl was found dead on South Beach, her body mauled. 

Alex Kintner, 10, of Mayfair Court in Amity, had been floating on a rubber raft off the crowded Village Beach when the attack occurred, according to the press release.  His body has not been recovered, but his raft floated ashore after the incident with what appeared to be a “large bite out of it,” Amity Police Chief Martin Brody said.