Malcolm Henry
Jaws is terrible and doesn’t hold up over the test of time. I said what I said. However, being attacked by a great white shark and living to tell the tale is something out of a Hollywood movie — but not Jaws.
Eric Steinley, 38, was surfing at Salmon Creek Beach in California when he felt the bite on his leg.
Holy fvck. Hell no.
The rest of the story goes like this:
“All of a sudden just this clamp. Not that fast, but this heavy, heavy clamp on my leg. I looked down and all of a sudden we were going down,” Steinley said.
“I hit him in the nose, the nose, this thing was huge. He let me go and I remember swimming up and I got up on my board and I think he went for the board one more time because he hit me twice.
“It was such as a measly punch compared to how big the creature was.
“I look back at my leg and I’m like ‘I’m gonna lose my leg.”
A DNA sample from the bite confirmed that the attacker was a great white shark. Good fvcking gracious.
“This time of the year is when great white sharks come here to feed. So, the sea lions and the harbor seals they give birth during the summer, their pups start to grow,” Luiz Rocha, a biologist with the California Academy of Sciences, told NBC.
With the help of a friend (Jared Davis) he was able to paddle to shore “stroke for stroke,” in what he claimed was five minutes that “seemed to take ages,” he told The Press Democrat.
“He was saying shark, he was saying help. It looked like he had a red stripe on his wetsuit” Davis said.
Steinley added: “(Jared) goes: ‘You’re going to make it. Don’t look, don’t look at your leg. Let’s just keep going,’ and then we paddled in together, and then a wave came and I gave it my all.”
Luckily for Steinley someone at the beach was a doctor who happened to have a medical kit in his car, NBC reported.
“The tourniquet was crucial. That’s what made the difference between a life-threatening injury and a stable patient,” Capt. David Bynum told NBC News.
“He’s fortunate. He had a lot of help right from the start.”
Steinley was airlifted to a Santa Rosa hospital while authorities temporarily closed beaches within two miles of the attack.
And even after the attack, this man plans to get back into the water.
“I still want to be part of the lifestyle. I’m just so thankful that everyone was there. Still in disbelief that I’m alive because of it,” he said.
A group of surfers launched a GoFundme page to help cover the medical costs, if you are so inclined to join that effort.
The moral of this story is that I have no interest in getting attacked by a shark.
Photo by Alex Steyn on Unsplash
