Posted on 03/31/2005 8:24:13 AM PST by kiriath_jearim
Teacher Frees Leg From Shark's Jaw
By CLARE NULLIS Associated Press Writer
March 30, 2005, 4:36 PM EST
CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- A British surfer attacked by a great white shark described Wednesday how he kicked and lashed out wildly to free his leg from the shark's jaws, which sliced his flesh "like a knife through butter."
Chris Sullivan was surfing with friends Monday when the 13-foot shark attacked.
"It came up slow and I saw its eyes and it looked really dark gray," said Sullivan, sitting in a wheelchair at a clinic. "I turned and I saw the underneath of its belly. Then I saw its mouth. Then it grabbed hold of my leg."
"I started lashing out, hitting it. I think I kicked it. I pulled the leg out. It felt like a knife through butter and I thought 'oops,'" said the school teacher who has traveled the world in pursuit of his surfing passion.
Sullivan, 32, said he managed to stay on his surf board and catch a wave back to shore, where a local veterinary surgeon who had also been surfing applied an emergency tourniquet to his leg.
Sullivan needed 200 stitches in his calf.
The attack at Nordhoek on a stunning stretch of beach about 12 miles from Cape Town occurred at the same point where a bodyboarder was killed 18 months ago.
A great white bit off the leg of a teenage surfer one year ago nearby, and a 77-year-old swimmer was eaten by a great white in nearby Fish Hoek last October.
Clive Mortimer, the station commander of the National Sea Rescue Institute, said Sullivan was "extremely lucky," to have escaped alive.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
"It felt like a knife through butter and I thought 'oops,'"
...the things that go through one's mind, while being eaten by a shark.
"Hey! You ate my chum!"
But, seeing how he survived apparently without long-term injury, I have to say: WHAT A COOL FREAKIN' SCAR (and TRUE story about how you got it) TO CARRY AROUND !
I like my legs too much to be dangling them in Great White territory.
Yeah - that's where I would want to go to surf!
I'd pay extra money and go to a lot of trouble to get there, too!
/sarcasm
That's an understatement,
Dawin Honorable Mention nominee
"No Chief, that scar is the Indianapolis"
Dawin=Darwin
Did you see those videos on TV of all the sharks off the Florida shore? Definitely putting a damper on swimming.
However....oops does show grit.
Yeah, why would you want to put yourself into such obvious danger? It's the sharks' territory. Leave them be.
"Going surfing in shark-infested waters is like skateboarding on the freeway."
Well, not quite so bad. Dangerous, but I suspect that if skateboarding on the freeway were to ever catch on, there would be more than the occasional fatality, like there is surfing with sharks. A surfer getting eaten by a shark is only slightly more probable than a golfer getting hit by lightning.
Even if I was a surfer, that is the last place I would go surfing. All those really cool Great White pics come from that area.
...I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
One of the great monologues ever in filmdom...
Twenty years and twenty-five pounds ago, I used to regularly surf off the coast of Santa Barbara. We'd be sitting outside the kelp beds waiting for the next set when you'd catch something black moving out of the corner of your eye.
It would only be a seal coming up for a breath and a look but the adrenaline rush would put your heart in your mouth. The trick, of course, was to hide from the others the fact that you'd just had the sh!t scared out of you.
Surfers are a macho bunch who don't scare easily. Jaws ruined surfing for me as I was never able to relax in the water after seeing that film.
Might be the best shark repellent.........
works for me.
I've actually read that it can create a chum slick pointing directly at you. If you are stranded in the water and have to go, it was recommended that you scoop/throw it as far away as possible.
Peacebaby, thanks for the ping. Could be a long season - looks like the media has been locking back in to sharks the last week or two..
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