Shark bites unsuspecting surfer sitting on his board in Texas Gulf. ‘He was lucky’
A surfer was bitten by a shark in the Texas gulf, near Corpus Christi, fellow surfers say.
It happened around 11:30 a.m. on Dec. 6, Tommy Shilts, a friend of the surfer, told McClatchy News.
“There had been a lot of activity in the water the last few days,” Shilts said. “There’s a lot of bait in the water, of course there’s a lot of fish in the water, which means there’s some sharks.”
The surfer, named Jim, had paddled out far from shore and was sitting on his surfboard when something slammed into him from below, Shilts said.
“The shark hit him in the foot so hard that it lifted him off his board a little bit and he almost fell off,” he said.
It took a moment for the surfer to process what had happened, what the blood dripping from his foot meant, Shilts said, but he “stayed super calm and just started working his way toward shore.”
When his friend made it back, Shilts took out a first aid kit and tended to the wound. Lifeguards arrived soon after, and the surfer was taken to a hospital.
Shilts shared photos of the wound in a Facebook post. (Warning: The images depict blood)
“He got lucky,” Shilts said, the damage could have been much worse and his friend is expected to recover.
“I think we all know that’s going to be a real tender foot for the next few weeks,” he said.
Shilts has been surfing since 1975, and his friend has decades of experience as well. Sharks have bumped his board before but never bitten.
“It’s always unsettling, but it’s part of the game,” he said.
There’s around 40 species of shark that call the Texas gulf home, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
While bull sharks and hammerheads are among the most common, there’s no way to know what kind sunk its teeth into the surfer.
He didn’t get a good look at the shark, Shilts said. It swam up, bit and vanished before he could lay eyes on so much as a fin.
“We had seen a large shark patrolling … where some of us more experienced surfers tend to go, a little further out for the bigger waves, and that’s where the bigger sharks are,” Shilts said. ”We all kind of knew what we were getting into.”
Despite his friend’s close call, Shilts hasn’t considered staying out of the water. He’s more worried about jellyfish than sharks.
“We surf in other countries a lot. There’s sharkier places and bigger sharks in other places that we see,” he said. “Here there’s a lot of sharks but they’re not super aggressive and (bites are) a very rare occurrence.”
There have been 44 recorded instances of unprovoked shark attacks in Texas since 1911, according to the International Shark Attack File.
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