STUART, Fla. – There was blood in the water, the sharks were circling and a grievously hurt Stephen Schafer _ his thigh gashed and his hand mauled _ was screaming in pain by the time the lifeguard reached him.

The lifeguard pulled Schafer onto his rescue board, but his cries quieted as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

He would soon be dead, marking the first deadly shark attack in Florida in five years, and perhaps a rare instance of a lethal attack by a swarm of sharks.

Schafer, 38, was attacked Wednesday afternoon a quarter-mile off South Florida's Atlantic Coast while he was out kiteboarding _ using a large kite-like sail to pull him along the surface on a board strapped to his feet. When the winds lightened and his sail dropped, the Stuart man found himself in the water, surrounded by sharks.

Lifeguard Daniel Lund, 46, spotted Schafer as he scanned the ocean with binoculars from the beach about 100 miles north of Miami. He said Schafer appeared to be in distress but wasn't flailing around. Instead, he seemed to be floating on his kite in the choppy water.

Lund paddled out, struggling through 6-foot waves. As he got close, he said, the normally turquoise-green ocean was red with blood, and he could see the shadows of perhaps two or three sharks circling Schafer, churning the crimson water, occasionally breaking the surface.

"The one thing he said is he'd been bitten by a shark," the lifeguard said

Afraid the blood would set off a feeding frenzy, Lund cradled the man's head and with one arm, began paddling back to shore as fast as he could, fighting the current and wind.

About 20 minutes later, they were on the beach with paramedics performing CPR on a badly bleeding Schafer. He died a short time later at a hospital.

Schafer, an artist and graphic designer with a lifelong love of the water, had a 10-inch gash in his right thigh and numerous teeth marks on his buttocks. Authorities said his right hand was mauled in an apparent attempt to fight off the animal _ or animals.

Authorities are investigating what types of sharks were involved and whether more than one shark bit Schafer. Beaches remained open Thursday.

The International Shark Attack File at the University of Florida's Museum of Natural History lists 1,032 documented shark attacks in the U.S. since 1690. Fifty of them were fatal.

"Internationally, we've been averaging four fatalities per year, despite the fact that there are billions and billions of human hours spent in the sea every year," said George Burgess, who oversees the file. "Your chances of dying in the mouth of a shark are close to infinitesimal."

He said that it was too soon to say whether Schafer was bitten by more than one shark, but that once there is a lot of blood in the water, other sharks sometimes come and investigate and may attack.

Friends said Schafer always followed the buddy system while surfing, and they were surprised he was in the water alone. They said he knew sharks were out there this time of year.

"It's hard to believe that such an experienced waterman would make that one mistake," said Teague Taylor, a childhood friend who says Schafer taught him to surf.

Schafer surfed competitively and later started sailing, windsurfing and kiteboarding.

"He had to be around the water," said Taylor, who manages a local surf shop.

The last fatal shark attack in the state was in 2005 off the Panhandle, where a 14-year-old Louisiana girl was attacked while swimming about 100 yards off shore.