A 66-year-old man is lucky to be alive after surviving a bull shark attack while swimming. He was on vacation in the Caribbean, visiting the island of Tobago.
In an interview with the BBC, 66-year-old Peter Smith discussed getting attacked by a bull shark. The fish bit him while he was swimming. The incident happened in April 2024.
"The conditions were perfect for a swim," he recalled. "I dived into the waves, swam out no more than 20 feet, and stood waist-deep in the water." He said he then felt "a very heavy object hit my leg."
"I look down, and there's a shark - and it's big," he said. Smith said the shark was gigantic and had bit into his leg. To avoid being dragged into the water, he decided to fight back. "I start punching the shark. To be honest, I don't know what I was trying to do, but I was hitting it. I can honestly say I've never hit anything as hard as I hit that shark."
Bull Shark Attack
The bull shark then attacked him in his left arm and stomach.
"The situation got serious really fast. I lost a lot of blood," Smith said. Fortunately, several of Smith's friends helped him with the shark as well.
After the attack, Smith was in serious danger due to his injuries. He had deep lacerations in his stomach as well as bites on his thigh and arm.
"I remember going into the water and seeing his terrible injuries. I could see bones, it was just awful," his wife, Joanna, told the BBC. "And somebody said, 'Get her away from here.'"
"I'm screaming, I'm crying, losing a lot of blood and losing consciousness," he said. "People are screaming at me to stay awake."
His bleeding was so bad that the local hospital ran out of blood. They transferred him to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida. After muliple surgeries, he fortunately survived.
"Then they laughed. So we were saying, 'Well, what's funny?' And they said, 'The membrane is made from shark,'" Smith recalled. "So I have a piece of shark in my leg."
