Surfer fights off shark attack in Seaside
By The Associated Press and The Daily Astorian
Surfer fights off shark attack in Seaside
SEASIDE – After a morning of catching waves, Brian Anderson waited his turn to surf the last set on a Christmas Eve outing with his buddies.
The experienced surfer took a breather and straddled his board, his legs dangling into the gray waters 100 yards from the Seaside beach near Tillamook Head.
He was exhausted and sweaty inside his wet suit as he looked into the cloudy sky above the ocean around noon.
Suddenly, he felt something bite down hard “like a bear clamp” on his right leg.
When the 36-year-old Seaside man looked down, he was staring into the face of a great white shark almost double the length of his nearly 6-foot surfboard.
“The nose of the shark came out of the water,” Anderson said. “It had this white triangle nose with these dark spots.”
His right foot and almost half his leg were inside the beast’s mouth.
Anderson did what his instincts and 20 years of surfer lore told him: He fought.
He held his surfboard down with his left hand and punched the great white in the eye as hard as he could with his right hand. He knew the eyes are a sensitive spot.
It felt like hitting a piece of rubber. Blubbery rubber.
“There was nothing else I could do. I just wanted that thing to let go,” he said. “I prayed, ‘I don’t want to die today.’”
The shark released his leg and sank back under the water, leaving deep cuts on Anderson’s right shin, foot and heel. That’s when the fear set in.
Anderson called it “‘Jaws’ Syndrome” after the movie series that still makes leg-dangling water lovers everywhere uneasy.
As Anderson paddled back to the shore, dragging his numb and bleeding leg in the water, he kept checking around him to see whether the animal was coming back.
“That’s when you wonder if it’s going to finish you,” he said.
Friends, such as John Newman, who took Anderson out surfing that morning, say surfers know what to do in case of sharks.
“He handled it perfectly,” Newman said. “He’s not just going to roll over and try to play dead when the shark is wrapped around his leg.”
Experts advise people who are being attacked by a shark to be aggressive and aim for the eyes, nose or gills.
Once Anderson reached the sand, Newman and other friends helped him tie the surfboard’s leash near the wounds as a tourniquet. They had heard Anderson yelling from the water. A handful of people saw the attack.
Anderson, who works at Surfs and Resort in Cannon Beach, paints houses and makes surfboards, talked to his friends until the ambulance arrived.
He got stitches and was released from Seaside Providence Hospital on Christmas morning. When he returned to the hospital that night, medical staff had him transferred to a hospital in Portland for treatment of possible infection.
Shark attacks along Oregon’s coast are rare. Since 1990, only nine of 490 attacks in the United States have been in Oregon, and none here were fatal, according to the International Shark Attack File, a Web site that tracks the events.
The last recorded attack in Clatsop County was in 1979, when a man was severely injured when he was attacked by a 14-foot great white shark while surfing at Cannon Beach.
Anderson, married with a 10-year-old son, was upbeat Christmas Day and eager to spend the holiday with family visiting from Seattle.
But he was bummed that the attack will keep him out of the water for at least three weeks.
“I’m still going to surf,” he said. “I like being out there and feeling the speed sensation whey you catch a wave. Nothing compares to it.”
Not even punching a shark.
Article taken from the Daily Astorian website.
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