A Florida man was bitten by a nurse shack and had to struggle for a long moment with the help of friends to set himself free from the animal’s jaws.
The incident was caught on video. In the footage captured on September 2 off the coast of Marathon city, Ervin Maccarty is seen stepping onto his boat and calling to his friends for help as a nurse shark hangs off his abdomen.
His friends quickly rallied round to help and one said: “He didn’t get your penis, did he?”
Friends tried removing the shark with their bare hands but when that didn’t work, they used a knife but the shark held fast despite bleeding from the knife cut.
“Don’t cut me!. Don’t bleed him out on me!” Maccarty says in the video as his friend tries to slice the shark in two.
They eventually succeeded in removing the shark and tried to place it back in the water to revive it.
Maccarty later explained what happened online: ”I was taking lunch break on boat while another six people were in the water retrieving lobsters. One of them came up for air and says he shot a grouper with a spear gun and that the grouper was stuck in the hole. I am good at getting groupers out of holes so the captain of the boat asked me to go in and get the grouper.
“I jumped in and went straight to the hole in about ten feet water. As soon as I get down there the shark came out of another hole and bit me. I struggled getting back to the boat.”
He added: “(The shark) hit me hard. It knocked the breath out of me so I had to get up for air but I felt the shark biting and trying to tear me open. It wouldn’t let go so I had to hold it tight with both hands so it wouldn’t rip me open and I had to get up for air with the shark pulling me down. I thought I would drown. I got up and saw the boat had floated away and everyone yelling that the shark had bit me. No one knew it was still on me. I had to get to the boat with no hands to swim with. It was a struggle and wore me out. I eventually got to boat. The video tells the rest.”
Below is the video:
