[oucorry]

KEY WEST, Fla. — The lead story on local television news here Thursday night was the tragic death of a woman who died on a boat after being struck in the head by a spotted eagle ray that leaped from the water near the Florida Keys.


The force of the blow from the 75-pound ray pushed the 57-year-old woman backward, and she died when she hit her head on the boat deck, officials said.


"It's just as freakish of an accident as I have ever heard," said Jorge Pino of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, in local news reports. "The chances of this occurring are so remote that most of us are completely astonished that this happened."


Astonishment also would describe the reaction of the Quiznos Madfin Shark Fishing Series competitors upon hearing the story.


Captain Rob Moore, 38, of Port Charlotte, Fla., has worked as a firefighter and a charter boat captain for almost two decades now. In his duties as a firefighter, Moore has responded to two emergency calls as a result of ray-human collisions.


"One of them punctured a guy's lung, so it happens," Moore said Friday morning.


Without yet knowing the species of the ray involved in the woman's death, Moore correctly guessed it was a spotted eagle ray.


"Those are the ones I see jump all the time," he said. "I've seen these rays jump, not that close to the boat, maybe 30 or 40 yards, and I will think, 'What if that was right here?'


"My sympathy goes out to that family. Could they have done anything different? I don't think so. It's not something you can plan against."


The woman was identified in news reports as Judy Kay Zagorski of Pigeon, Mich. Her husband was piloting the boat at about 25 miles-per-hour out of a channel near Marathon.

The couple's children were also in the boat.


"The ray just actually popped up in front of the vessel," Pino said, in news reports. "The father had not even a second to react. It was too late. It happened instantly and the woman fell backwards and, unfortunately, died as a result of the collision."


In the other accident Moore worked, a woman suffered a mild head injury.


"She got hit by the (ray's) wing," Moore said. "But the (boat's) windshield was cracked. It takes a lot of force to crack a plexiglass windshield."


espnoutdoors.com

[shortbus]

man that's just crazy. What are the odds that you're driving in the boat and a fish jumps up and nails you as you go by? Better than the odds of a bird flying in the path of a Randy Johnson fastball and meeting instant doom but they still have to be infinitely slim.

[D Winkler]

That sucks. I guess anything can happen.