Spearfisherman fights off shark attack; ‘thought it was my last day’
A spearfisherman in Australia “thought it was my last day” Sunday when a bull shark charged and bit him in the leg, forcing him to fight off the attack with his speargun.
Phillip Brown, 24, was fishing for barramundi near Rocky Island off Yarrabah when he came face to face with the shark after exploring a cave 10-feet deep, according to TropicNow (a news agency in Cairns) and the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“We sort of both got a fright from each other, but I was still a long way from the rocks, so I tried to swim a bit faster to the rock,” he told TropicNow.
“I knew what was going to happen; he’s a bull shark, he’s going to have a go at me.
“As I just grabbed the rock, it came up from behind and grabbed my leg.
“I just felt a big, numb jerk. It twisted, popped my knee out the socket. If I didn’t have the dislocated knee, I think he probably would have ripped it off.
“I stabbed him on top of the head with the spear gun and he took off, but he kept circling around because I was losing a lot of blood.”
But by then, Brown was in ankle-deep water where two friends and two nephews came to his rescue, using an anchor rope as a tourniquet around his thigh and a shirt tied to his lower leg to stem the flow of blood.
They carried him to the boat and transported him to a hospital in his hometown of Yarrabah where he was initially treated before being airlifted to Cairns Hospital where he underwent surgery. The extent of his injuries was unclear.
Also on FTW Outdoors: Backpacker has standoff with cougar, birds come to her rescue (video)
“I thought it was my last day,” he told TropicNow. “I thought I was going to lose my leg or lose my life.”
The traumatic experience has not deterred him from going spearfishing again.
“I go a lot of places diving — Batt Reef, Tongue Reef, all the outer reefs,” he told ABC.
“And then I get torn up at home, right in my own front yard — it was just the wrong place at the wrong time I guess.
“I’ll be going back diving, but I won’t be diving back at home. I’ll just go back out to the reefs, in the clear water.”
Photo of sharks courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.