A shark, possibly 10 to 12 feet long, bit a drifting kiteboard Tuesday afternoon at Kaa Point near Kanaha Beach Park in Kahului, Maui Ocean Safety officials said.
No one was injured. After the incident was reported at about 2:20 p.m., the shoreline — a mile on either side of Kaa Point — was closed until dusk.
Morgan Flannery of San Francisco told Maui Now, an online publication, she was kiteboarding but had to swim in because of trouble with the board.
"I swam in, ditched the board because it’s too hard to swim with, and then I met my instructor on land," Flannery said. "We were looking out at the board, and we saw a shark attack it."
Flannery said she watched as the shark went after the board a couple of times, "totally submerged it one of those times," then "figured out that it was not a meal."
"I felt very lucky ’cause I came right through that same path that the board came through," she told Maui Now. "I am very thankful today that it was the board and not me."
She said the bite measured about 10 inches.
Flannery’s instructor, Foster Wick of Aqua Sports Maui, told Maui Now that he’d never seen a shark at the location.
He said that when Flannery had difficulties with her kite about a quarter-mile offshore, she attempted to drag the apparatus to land but left it when she had trouble swimming with it.
"It took her a long time to get in, and the board was kind of trailing behind her," Wick said.
Flannery said she waited for the board to drift into a rocky area before recovering it.
Ocean Safety and Department of Land and Natural Resources officials will determine whether to reopen the area this morning.
The park is between Kahului Bay and Spreckelsville Beach.
According to witnesses, the shark was 10 to 12 feet in length, but no information on the type of shark was available, Maui County officials said in a news release.
