A 40-year-old man was brutally attacked by a shark during a diving excursion, but he was saved when a friend acted quickly and jumped into the water to rescue him.
Boat captain Jacob Johnson was diving with three other people on Tuesday, 30 miles off the Emerald Coast of Florida, in the United States, when, during the last dive of the day, a bull shark bit his friend.
“I was helping one of the other divers remove the equipment when I heard: ‘Help, help. I was bitten,’” Johnson recalled to Fox 10 News.
After hearing “the sense of urgency and, surprisingly, the calm in his voice,” Johnson initially thought it was a minor accident.
“I was looking over the side of the boat to tease him; I thought he had been bitten by a triggerfish,” he explained. “And he was surrounded by blood.”
His friend, whose identity was not disclosed, suffered serious injuries to both forearms and could not climb back onto the boat because of the injuries.
“There was no time for emotions nor to assess risks. I simply jumped into the water,” Johnson said, who quickly removed the diver’s gear and managed to push him back onto the boat.
The rest of the group “went into instinct mode,” Johnson said, and also participated in the rescue.
“Everyone was helping. One of the guys took off his own shirt to make a tourniquet on his arm,” he recalled.
Another man happened to have WoundSeal, a powder that helps to staunch small external bleeding, which his wife had packed in his bag, and managed to use it.
They applied the product to the victim’s arms, which helped reduce the bleeding, and then improvised a tourniquet with plastic zip ties.
The group continued talking with the victim to keep him calm, and he remained conscious until the arrival of the Coast Guard, which quickly took him ashore and transported him by helicopter to a hospital.
The expectation is that the man will fully recover, despite the shark having struck an artery in one forearm and the other requiring dozens of stitches.
