You might've heard a little snippet on the news, but yesterday me and a couple friends were at the seawall on 53rd just spending the day on "lovely Galveston" This girl was gonna meet up with us after she got here hair done, so me and the guys were just waiting out in the water for her. There were fish jumping out of the water pretty frequently and I start joking about how if I tried, I could never catch one because they're so fast and the water visibility was like a foot. Like a minute later, after I had given up messing with the annoying things, one jumps out of the water and comes down on my head. I didn't know what it was, I thought my friend had thrown a football (which was odd to me bc we didn't have a football), but he was just cracking up bc a fish smacked me in the head right in front of him. So we got to talking about what're the odds of that happening, which made what happened next bizarre. The girl gets there, she's a really cool, attractive girl. We're all just hanging out about 40 yeards off the beach, we tell my fish story and laugh about the odds of it, and she's freaking out about fish/seaweed near her (as girls tend to, can't blame her). She mentioned the 8 year old boy who just lost his hand in a shark attack, and we got to talking about what we'd do if a shark attacked and how that would never happen. Literally like 5 seconds later, we notice her freaking out like she did before. We were really close to eachother, like a few feet, so I could see just the look of terror on her face. She was obviously in pain but we just figured it was either A)nothing B)seaweed C) worst case like a jellyfish or stingray or something. This all happened so fast we really didn't have time to register, but then she turns sideways, kicked her leg up and brought up what was obviously not a fish. Definitely a shark. From my angle I could only see the fin, it was like a foot long. She's sobbing/screaming/panicking and just as the shark let go, she bolts for shore as fast as she can. We've got a good idea what the hell just happened so we swim for our lives as fast as we can, trying to catch up with her. (When you think your life's in danger, the adreniline is crazy.) I was the farthest from shore so there was a good 10 seconds where I was thinking "******* I can't believe I'm gonna die in a shark attack. No more Clutchcity." We catch up with her about knee deep water, she's just stunned, so my room mate picks her up and carrys her to shore. It was the most surreal moment ever. We're shouting for a lifeguard, trying to figure out what to do, and if it weren't for the adreniline we would've been freaking winded. I sprinted down the beach to our stuff to get towels and her phone so we could call her family, and the other guy ran to get a lifeguard, who was clueless ("A shark? Are you sure" "Yes! Get the F over here and do something!). My room mate was just comforting her aplying pressure to her foot. I saw her foot after we got out of the water, it was kind of dripping blood, then after about 5 more seconds, it was pretty obvious from my angle behind that her foot was pretty badly bitten. There was skin hanging all along the bite, and the tendons were definitely cut. It was down to the bone and when she kicked, I was pretty sure the sharks teeth just sawed through everything not bone (she said she couldn't feel her toe). I'm a bio major but it was pretty disgusting. She was very very good in that situation. Eh, she could've yelled "shark!" but if I were the one being attacked, I don't know what I'd do either. AND she managed to swim to shore the fastest with a jacked up foot. She was crying of course but that's understandable. In the water she was saying she didn't want to get her hair wet bc she just got it done so it was so wierd how 30 mins later she'd be lying on the beach like she was. Everyone was gathering around of course and like 20 people kept asking me what happened, rubbernecking. I was like, uhhh what do you THINK happened? Take a freaking look. From there it was calm-down time. The medical people came and did their thing. We were just glad she was relatively ok. I lit up a cigarette but my hands were shaking like crazy. We had talked about maybe drinking a bit at the beach but its a good thing we didn't because apparently blood is thinner when you're drunk, not to mention the slight rise in temperature that could attract sharks even more. We followed her to UTMB and I had class like right then so I had my dad come pick me up and I got there just in time for lab. I missed a quiz but I figured shark attack was a damn good excuse. So in the end, she'll be ok, just some minor rehab probably with a walker, but it could've been worse. Much worse. We talked about buying a lotto ticket because of all the odds we were beating that day. I think I still might. It was a pretty small shark but if you think about it, a small shark is just a really big pirhana. I think they said on the news it was a bull shark. Am I more afraid of sharks in the water now when I swim? Nope. It sucks what happened but it was such a remote possibility it won't change my view in the future. When people see movies like Jaws or other "what if..." movies, they get all worried for nothing. I feel the same way to an extent about terrorism. I don't think I'll ever die from sharks, terrorist attack, lightning, roller coasters, plane crash, and if it did happen it would be really incredible and tragic so I just don't concern myself with the extremely statisticly improbable.
Holy ****! I just finished reading this article on the Chronicle web site, and then I stumble across this!!! I'm freakin' stunnded. I hope the victim is alright, as well as you and your friends. I can't imagine the trauma!
Holy sh*t dude. That is a crazy story. When I hear about these shark attacks it freaks me out. My wife and I were watching discovery the other night (it's shark week btw, weird huh...) and we saw an account of this lady was killed by a shark in Maui. She was snorkeling around coral reefs, swimming through the channels it creates, in like 5 feet of water and got attacked by a large Tiger shark. My wife looked at me in stunned silence. This is EXACTLY what we were doing on our honey moon in Kauai. btw, where do you go to school?
I'm not sure what I would do. I think they said on the nature channel you are not supposed to hit them in the nose. You are supposed to actually stick your fingers in their eyes. But damn, how the hell are you going to do that when the thing is clamped onto your leg. I think the only thing you can do is panic and run.
Wow, I heard this on the news. I feel like I've had a brush with fame. Hope she's ok and the damage isn't too bad. "No more Clutchcity." lol.
5 shark attacks in 20 years....5 million visitors to Galveston each year. pretty good odds. i used to love to go out in the morning early and watch the porpoises play off the 2nd and 3rd sandbar on Pirate's Beach. always felt a bit safer with them around. maybe that's an old wive's tale, though.
Yeah, actually minutes before the attack I was saying how I'd keep my arms out to protect vital organs and get my fingers in its eye. But then after hell breaks loose, you go into survival mode. I couldn't see it very well until she kicked it up so there was nothing to grab at really until it was too late, and it's not like I could tell her or even think to tell her to go for its eyes or to stop kicking so it didn't saw her foot off. I was stunned. Yeah, she'll be ok. Her mom said she stayed at UTMB overnight and is having surgery today. Damn, I had no clue this was such a newsworthy thing when it happened. Everyone's asking me about it. The lifeguard superviser said this was the first attack in like 10 years.
Haha, me and my roommate (the guy who carried her and took care of her mostly on the beach) are laughing right now bc we're reading the reports and they say her boyfriend, who happened to be at the beach somewhere and got there after we were taking care of her, carried her to safety, which just sucks for my friend being omitted like that. Oh, and Spiderman was there and killed the shark, but the media just sucks at reporting I guess so guys like Spiderman and my friend get gypped.
You and me both man... shark week is awesome. It'll just be more interesting to me now. I'm taking a summer mini at San Jacinto South but Aug 20th I move into my apartment in Austin. Back to UT. 2 more years left.
2 attacks in one week is just scary. My wife and I took the kids this last weekend to Galveston (5 yr old twins and a 3 yr old) and I had never seen so many fish jumping from the water. These news stories have me and my wife freaked pretty badly because I had my kids, one at a time, out pretty far in the water. Crazy. I hope she has a full recovery.
Man thats crazy. There has been three confirmed shark attacks this year. A fisherman was bitten in the Pirates Beach earlier this summer. And just last week a young boy was severely bitten while fishing around the Bryan beach area. I don't know what the deal is but It may be that the bait fish have been real active lately and they move in closer to shore when the surfs flat and the sharks move in closer to shore with them and when the ocean is smooth and calmer than normal the slightest disturbance in the water is detected by these sharks and these sharks may be mistaking these disturbances in the water by people for baitfish. Glad she's going to be ok.
Wow! That is freaking nuts man! Glad that you're alright and it sounds like she will be ok. I would have been pissing myself for sure.
I have a beach house on Terramar (West Beach) and was down there two weekends ago through Tuesday. I noticed about a fifty yard, four feet widestream of mullets, their heads just above the water, droning on just in front of us. I've surfed the GC and am not afraid being in the water, even a little,(as Mad Max suggested) givent that the odds are incredibly one-sided that you will avoid being attacked. But, these fish were just weird looking all bunched together, all their heads closely together, just out of the water, and they went on forever, a silver river reflecting accross the rolling murky waves...I grabbed my three kids, 8, 7 and 3 from just beyond the first sandbar and got them in...I had a feeling that shark may be feeding on them. Fishermen may be able to answer, as I've asked the question to non-fishermen and they provided nothing definitive, but was I correct in grabbing @ss (mine and my three kiddos) and taking them to shore? It's just odd that these attacks have happened after what I just saw when I was down there. Thanks for sharing the story.
As for their being no sharks in Galveston, we used to regularly catch 8+ foot bull sharks out there, they are potential killers no doubt. I'll stay on land or in the boat thank you very much. I remember wade fishing one time and you could see three and four foot sharks following your catch up. Game over, you win, I'm outta here.
Yeah, that was a smart move. They tell you to always avoid schooling fish, especially mullet, for that very reason.
