A California surfer is lucky to be alive and without injury after having an extremely close call with a 10-foot shark. Although the fish knocked him off his board, he managed to use the surfboard to protect him.
42-year-old Jens Heller was just trying to soak in the sun at the Montara State Beach on Saturday. That's when the shark approached and ran into his board. At first, the surfer thought it was a rock. But it turned out it was a shark's nose against his foot. The fish knocked the surfer off his board and into the water below.
That's when he got a good look at the shark's teeth trying to bite him, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Rather than bite into the surfer, the shark ended up biting his board instead.
"I kind of panicked, obviously," he told the Chronicle. "I thought, 'That's it. I will not get away from this.'"
Surfer Vs Shark
From there, the surfer began a battle for his life against the shark.
"I shoved the board towards the shark and tried to kick to get away, but then it let go of the board pretty quickly and just swam away. That's when I grabbed my board as fast as I could and, like, turned to shore and just paddled back out of there," Heller told the outlet.
Fortunately, he managed to make it back to the shore where his wife and daughter were waiting for him. His wife had no idea the shark had attacked him.
"My wife didn't really, couldn't believe it. She has a kind of a fear of sharks since she grew up in California," he said. That's when he realized how close he came to death. The shark took a bite out of the surfboard.
"It was probably one of these curiosity bites, because if it had full strength, it would have probably just taken out a whole piece of the board, and that didn't happen," he said. "It makes you realize how lucky you are to be alive. It's the power of the ocean. It does what it wants with you. You can't control it."
