Given all the shark attacks lately, I thought I’d depart from the usual theme of my blogs and recall a story from my marine science days, the shark attack I witnessed, and my subsequent rescue attempt. All of this is true.
When I was a graduate student at the University of Miami, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (RSMAS) in the 90’s, two friends and I decided to take an afternoon off and do a shore SCUBA dive off Ft. Lauderdale. It was extraordinarily hot that day and as we scampered out of the parking lot and across the sand we couldn’t wait to get underwater where it was marginally cooler. We didn’t bring a dive flag that would alert boaters to our presence, because, well…we were young and stupid and just didn’t want to be bothered with dragging that along. Boats didn’t enter the area on the shore side of the reef, and beyond the reef we would be at least 20’ down, so no biggie. The lifeguard was letting us know that we had better not enter the water through his beach – “Hey! Where’s your flag!? Stop!” So with our tanks on our backs and carrying our fins, we sprinted across the beach and into the surf pretty quickly, heading for the reef underwater and smiling at each other for outsmarting that lifeguard.
The coral reefs off of Ft. Lauderdale are reefs in name only and very little remained of live hard coral, at least where we were, most likely due to the repeated beach renourishment projects along the coast (where sand is pumped to back onto the beaches from offshore). The coral reefs were mostly dead as the sand had choked out the living coral, but this was still a decent place to find fish of all types and, if we were lucky, a shark or two. We had great fun cooling off and observing several species of fish including puffers, surgeon, triggers, lookdown, butterfly, parrotfish, some jacks, barracuda, and more. We all kept an eye on each other while at the same time allowing ourselves to relax and enjoy the serenity of the moment, chilling in our cool underwater world.
So it was a bit of an annoyance when I heard an excited and muffled underwater yell from one of my dive buddies. I thought to myself, “I’ll bet Antonio found yet another puffer fish to tease hoping the poor thing will inflate.” Well, when I turned around I didn’t see a puffer fish, I witnessed my first sha
rk attack. This shark had latched on to Antonio’s thigh, vigorously shaking its head back and forth, and would not let go. Antonio’s hands had gripped the head of the shark trying to get it to release. My dive buddy’s eyes were wide but he wasn’t panicked in the least. What a pro. He was wearing a shorty wetsuit, which obscured just how bad the bite was.
To digress for a moment, previous to this I had spent plenty of time in the water with sharks, having taken the graduate school’s Tropical Marine Biology class with Dr. Sonny Gruber, a world renown expert on sharks and shark behavior, at the Bimini Biological Field Station (AKA the Bimini Shark Lab). In addition to daily field trips to collect and identify benthic and reef flora and fauna, day and night shark dives were a regular occurrence. Most who left that program were more than comfortable swimming with sharks and knew shark behavior pretty well. Anyway, while I had hung out with lots of sharks before I had never witnessed an actual attack.
As Antonio was trying to fight off this shark I got my fins moving and swam over to him as fast as I could while simultaneously unsheathing my dive knife. I had no intention of stabbing this aggressive shark, which could further infuriate it, so I carefully wedged the knife between Antonio’s thigh and the shark’s mouth. My rationale was I would pry the mouth open and force it to let go. As you might guess, this didn’t work at all and I just as quickly put the knife away. Should we have brought that dive flag so we could have somehow alerted the lifeguard that we had trouble? Well…couldn’t think of that now. Too late.
The more aggressive we got in trying to make it release his leg, the more stubborn it became, sinking his jaws deeper and holding on for all it was worth. We were clearly ticking it off the more we fought, so maybe we should do the opposite? I signaled Antonio to try to calm down, let go of the shark, and I would back off a foot or two. At some point over the next minute or so, the shark probably realized that we were at a bit of a stalemate and reluctantly released Antonio. Apparently wanting more, it made straight for my head forcing me to bat it away to prevent a second attack. Tired and cranky, the maneater beat a retreat and headed out to sea.
While I wasn’t able to get a picture at the time, I’m including a photo I found that depicts the type and approximate size beast we were dealing with. The bruiser we battled was a tad larger than this baby nurse shark, so at about 12 inches we cataloged it in the “Extremely Puny and Harmless” category of Ginglymostoma cirratum. OK, not a maneater. 
Turns out Antonio had found the little guy and, as with his favorite puffer fish, he had corralled it with his hands and would not leave the thing alone. At some point after sharky grew weary of this game he latched on to Antonio’s leg, gripping the wetsuit and some of Antonio’s skin with a vengeance between its two larger grinding type teeth, and with great tenacity would not let go! Both of us gently pulled, tugged, and lightly cajoled that shark pleading with it to, “C’mon little guy, just let go!” I even tried to pry its mouth open with my astonishingly dull dive knife, being careful not to injure that baby. We finally just left it alone and after a bit he gave up the fight and swam off but not before coming at me — but he was most likely just dazed and confused after its ordeal. I have never laughed that hard underwater before or since. Antonio and I had a great time that night at the RSMAS bar recalling the story of the shark attack, our bravery, and him being a survivor.
Hope to see you in the office again soon!
Your oceanographer/shark protector/chiropractor,
Dr. John
