Can't really blame the shark...
A man who was seriously injured after being bitten by a shark off the coast of Ireland says he doesn’t blame the animal for what happened.
Sebastian Achim was fishing aboard a small vessel south of Ardmore, County Waterford, on August 11 when a shark he had pulled onto the boat suddenly bit into his calf.
The group had been catching, tagging and releasing sharks for research, and Achim had just removed the hook from what he believed was his first blue shark when it suddenly lunged.
“I was just admiring the fish itself, when he just jumped in a millisecond and grabbed into my calf,” Achim told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.
He said he believed he was keeping a safe distance from the shark when it attacked.
Despite the injury, the crew’s first priority was getting the animal back into the ocean.
“We just threw him back in the water, we didn’t manage to tag him,” Achim said. “We didn’t want the fish to be more panicked than that.”
And while Achim was left seriously injured, he said he believes the shark was simply acting on instinct.
“I cannot say if it was a deliberate attack, or it was not a deliberate attack, but the fish is in the right anyway,” he said. “We took it out of the water and the fish was in his survival instinct.”
The situation quickly became critical. With the boat around three hours from shore, Achim began losing significant amounts of blood and said he started passing out around 10 minutes after the bite.
“I didn’t think I was going to make it,” he recalled.
A helicopter eventually airlifted him to safety, with Achim saying he believes he would not have survived without it.
He was taken to Cork University Hospital and underwent surgery, where doctors told him he had lost skin and tissue from his leg and would need skin grafts.
Achim says he is now recovering and remains hopeful that sensation in the injured area will return