A man spearfishing off a northern California beach was badly injured when he was attacked by a shark that took hold of his leg. The victim and his father were just a few hundred yards offshore of Pebble beach on Friday when the shark chomped down on the man’s thigh with its powerful jaws.
According to the captain of the state fire department, the shark attacked him at about 1:40 p.m. local time. Captain Josh Silveira reported to the media that luckily at the time of the attack there were two off-duty policeman fishing nearby and saw the man struggling in the water.
The two men, who were wrapping up their day of fishing in Still Water Cove, came to the aid of this badly injured fisherman. Luckily, one of these off-duty deputies had emergency medical training. He applied a tourniquet to the man’s leg and stopped it from profusely bleeding and then the two of them got the man into shore.
The deputies who happened to be fishing at the time of the shark attack were able to stop the bleeding with that tourniquet before the man was transported to a trauma center where he underwent surgery. There is no update on the man’s condition today.
There are conflicting reports on whether this man’s leg was severed or still intact from this shark bite. The clip from the above video came from the HLN news, which was aired on local television after the shark attack. The news anchor claims the shark severed the man’s leg. Fox News reports the man’s “leg was intact , but the bite was serious.”
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After the shark attack, officials put up warning signs indicating there were sharks in the area. The location had not had any recent shark sightings. Back in March, a great white shark knocked a kayaker out of his kayak in Monterey Bay, but he didn’t bite the man.
A “large aquatic animal” was spotted by police flying overhead in a helicopter after the incident. They were searching the location near the site where the man was attacked when they saw a shape under the surface of the water, “which may have been a shark ,” according to Mercury News .
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