A fisherman was lucky to survive a terrifying shark attack in which the beast “grabbed his arm like a dog bites a bone”.
Brett Highlands was spear-fishing in remote waters with his pals in Western Australia’s Kimberley region – but he quickly became the bait when the deadly fish came up behind him.
At first, he thought he was going to die at the jaws of the killer, reports 7News.
But the brave angler stabbed his spear into the belly of the shark and it shot off.
Brett said the first bite was strangely gentle and added: “It bit – then it bit again – almost like a dog trying to get a good grip of a bone.
“I didn’t have a lot of time to think but I do remember thinking ‘oh my god here we go, this is it’.”
After the creature fled, Brett swam 80 metres back to his boat.
His mates made a make-shift bandage from a diving belt to stop the bleeding and rushed him back to shore.
There, emergency services flew him to Perth for surgery.
“I rammed the spear into what I could see was the belly of the shark and it just released straight away and shot off,” Brett said.
“(I) just backstroked and kept looking under the water to see if it was coming at me.”
Miraculously, surgeons at Royal Perth Hospital re-attached every tendon.
But the danger is not gone and doctors say the main risk is now infection.
Brett joked: “I’ll say the story will get bigger – that shark will be six metres by the time I’m a grandpa.
“Sometimes they say things happen for a reason and I’d broken my spear gun only ten minutes before that so I should’ve just finished my dive and got out of the water.”
His girlfriend Hannah stayed with him throughout the whole petrifying saga.
She said: “Even though they’ve got great hands working on him you don’t know what the outcome is going to be, or the extent of the damage.
“I think it’s the best outcome out of a terrible situation.”
The courageous couple say they will be braving the ocean again in the future – but this time with a shark shield.
“We all know the dangers when we get in the water, it’s their territory. But we choose to do it,” Brett said.
Experts have taken samples of Brett’s wetsuit to work out whether it was a tiger shark.
There were seven attacks in Western Austrailia in 2020 and there have already been eight so far this year.
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