CAPE SAN BLAS, Florida (AP) – A 16-year-old boy who lost a leg following the second shark attack in three days along northwestern Florida’s coast was in critical condition yesterday and facing more surgery.

Craig Adam Hutto, of Lebanon, Tennessee, was fishing in waist-deep water about 60 feet (20 metres) from shore with his brother and a friend Monday when the shark grabbed his right thigh, nearly severing the leg, said Captain Bobby Plair of the Gulf County Sheriff’s Office.

Physicians later amputated the leg. Dr Reed Finney, a cardiovascular surgeon at Bay Medical Centre in Panama City, said yesterday the limb had suffered irreparable damage to blood vessels and nerves between the hip and knee, as well as to most of the surrounding muscle.

On Saturday, 14-year-old Jamie Marie Daigle died from her injuries after her leg was mutilated by a bull shark about 80 miles (130 kilometres) away, near Destin.

The number of shark attacks rises in the summer because that’s when the animals come closer to shore to search for food and there are more people at the beach, said John Tyminski, a senior biologist with the Centre for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota.

“It’s a sharky time of year,” said Tyminski.