Man who filmed harrowing shark attack where you could hear scream was in the 'wrong place at the wrong time'
Man who filmed harrowing shark attack where you could hear scream was in the 'wrong place at the wrong time'
**WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT**
A man who captured some incredibly graphic content from a vicious shark attack which was so painful the camera picked up the sound of screams underwater says it was a case of 'wrong place, wrong time'.
In 2018 British diver Dan White was on holiday in Egypt with his girlfriend when they and others went diving into the Red Sea and came across a shark.
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He'd been in the water the previous day and filmed a trio of sharks without incident and once again got the camera on the creature as he thought it was 'a cool encounter'.
There was a group of several German divers who were diving with White and on this day the shark's behaviour started to change with painful consequences for one of them.
White said that one of the bubbles from another diver 'spooked the shark and it turned to investigate', which led to the very dangerous oceanic whitetip shark taking a particular interest in one of the people.
Footage taken by White showed the shark swimming closer and closer to other divers in the water as they swam away and tried to avoid it.
Eventually, the predator circled back and made a beeline for one diver, biting down onto their leg with a bite so painful that the recording picked up the sound of another person screaming in horror through the water.
Telling the BBC's Why Sharks Attack about the incident, White explained just how much damage the painful bite had done to the unfortunate diver.
He said: "It bit into the diver's leg, latched on, thrashed around and ended up going over almost like a cartwheel.
“It was crazy, it wouldn't let go for what felt like forever. It ended up tearing his calf muscle completely off his leg.”
The shark had bitten right down to the bone, with White saying there was 'a big plume of blood in the water' from the man who'd had his leg bitten into, while he could hear 'a shriek noise' through the water from another diver who was horrified by what she'd seen.
As they were 10 metres below the surface of the water the bitten diver had to be helped to the surface and heaved out of the water, where he was rushed to the shore for urgent medical attention.
First responders gave the stricken diver pain medication and applied a tourniquet to his ravaged leg, which incredibly didn't need to be amputated.
White said of the shark attack that it was 'not a Jaws story' where there was a shark deliberately hunting humans and it was simply a case of 'wrong place, wrong time'.
Joe Harker