'I ended up in a shark den': Deck hand bitten in fall from boat needed 100-plus stitches

WEST PALM BEACH — On Marlin Wakeman’s many trips to the Bahamas as a deckhand on charter fishing boats, he would notice dozens of sharks gathered by docks, where people throw buckets of fish at them.

He often would wonder: What would happen if anyone fell in?

On Friday, April 26, he found out the most painful way a person could.

Wakeman's foot slipped as he jumped from the dock to a boat at Flying Fish Marina in Clarence Town and he fell into a shiver of 20 hungry sharks. When he hit the water, a 7-foot Caribbean reef shark sunk its teeth into his left leg and pulled Wakeman's head underwater.

“I ended up in a shark den,” Wakeman, 24, of Stuart said Thursday, May 9, at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach. “I wasn’t really scared at the moment. I just knew I had to get out as quickly as possible. Thankfully, I’m here to tell the story.”

Wakeman had just managed to pull himself onto the boat’s deck, when a second shark grazed his right shoulder with its teeth.

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Path of shark-bite survival went from tourniquet to wheelbarrow to clinic

The boat’s captain heard Wakeman’s cries for help from inside the boat. When he saw him, he tied a tourniquet on his leg, pushed him to a van in a wheelbarrow and sent him to the nearest clinic. There, the medical staff stopped the bleeding and stitched up the wounds.

“Nothing really hurt at first,” said Wakeman, who was working on a charter for Bucket List, a company based in Stuart. “It was a lot of pressure, but I didn't feel any sharpness. You don't really feel the teeth going into you.”

Wakeman said the pain was the worst on the van ride to the clinic, when the adrenaline wore off. He passed out from the pain.

“I wasn’t freaking out, but I told my captain, ‘Hey man, I don’t really want to die right now,’ ” Wakeman said with a chuckle.

The boat’s owner chartered a plane to fly him to West Palm Beach the next day. His dad, Rufus, met him at the airport and took him to St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach.

When the elder Wakeman saw the text about his son’s shark attack, he said it felt like time stood still. His wife, Melynda, said she went into “shock mode” and “felt like a million little pieces.”

“It’s the worst text you can get,” said Rufus Wakeman, a charter captain himself. “I have several friends who have been bitten, and it’s a shocking revelation when you see some of the wounds these people have had to endure. Now it's our son.”

He is glad that the surgeon who cared for his son, Dr. Robert Borrego, specializes in treating shark attacks. He has treated three so far this year and typically has seven shark bite patients a year, he said.

“Due to a particular chain of events that were set in motion that day, (Marlin) is sitting here right now,” Rufus Wakeman said. “We’re very grateful for all the powers that be that got us to this point.”

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West Palm Beach surgeon 'shocked' that shark attack survivor escaped the water

Borrego said the shark just missed Marlin’s femoral artery, which carries blood from the lower abdomen to the lower limbs. If it had bitten him there, he would have lost more blood and possibly his life.

“It shocks me that he was able to get out of that water,” Borrego said. “The fact that there were 20 sharks in there and he was able to get out and still have a leg is amazing.”

Stopping the bleeding is the first course of action after a shark bite, because bleeding out is the greatest threat to life. After a patient is stabilized, infection becomes the top concern. A lab at St. Mary’s studies the effects that contact with a shark’s mouth can have on the human body. It has found a greater amount of bacteria the closer sharks are to shore.

As soon as Wakeman got to the hospital, Borrego prescribed him a “broad spectrum” of antibiotics. He then performed surgery to clean out the wounds and check for infection.

Borrego expects Wakeman to make a full recovery. He took out his stitches this past week and said the 24-year-old is “healing nicely.” He expects the scars to heal in two weeks, but recommends that Wakeman keep his leg out of the sun for a year.

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Shark bite survivor reminds people not to get 'lazy' near apex predators

Wakeman said he will be more careful working near the water from now on. He said he “got a little lazy” after bringing fishing gear back and forth from the the dock to the boat, which makes regular fishing charter trips from Stuart to the Bahamas.

He jumped 3 feet, rather than cautiously stepping toward the boat. That's when he fell.

Wakeman had narrowly escaped a few close encounters with sharks on other fishing and diving trips. He considers the incident “lucky” because it was him who fell, rather than a child or an elderly person who wouldn't have had the strength to pull themselves onto the boat.

“Keep in mind that (sharks) are apex predators and you don’t want to end up in their mouth,” Wakeman said.

Florida leads the world in shark bites. Awareness is the best way to avoid them.

The best way to stay away from a shark attack in the ocean is to avoid swimming in murky water and being aware of the blacktip shark migration period, which roughly runs from January to April.

Florida leads the world in shark bites, according to a report by the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File. The report logged 83 shark attacks in Palm Beach County since 1882 and found that 15% of bites in Florida are from blacktip sharks.

Palm Beach County has the third-most shark attacks since 1882 out of all other Florida counties. The greatest concentrations are in Volusia County, home to Daytona Beach, which some call the “shark bite capital of the world.”

Maya Washburn covers northern Palm Beach County for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida-Network. Reach her at mwashburn@pbpost.com. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida fisherman details shark attack in Bahamas, treated in West Palm