Mel Ismail, a professional firefighter and surfer, has described jabbing at the eye of the shark that severed his leg during an attack at Glenfield Beach near Geraldton on September 14, in his first public account of the ordeal.
Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corp in an interview broadcast Thursday, Ismail said he was sitting out the back of the surf break and had just spotted a pod of about 20 dolphins when something hit him hard.
“I thought I got hit by a dolphin, initially,” Ismail said. “And suddenly — bang — something grabbed me and dragged me down into the water. And I knew it was a shark.”
Ismail said he came face to face with the animal as it bit down on his leg.
“I got to a point where I saw its eye … a big black eye,” Ismail said. “But it was winking back at me — I was trying to get my fingers in its eye and just pushing its eye as I was being dragged.”
What looked like a wink is a defensive reflex seen in several shark species, including white sharks and mako sharks, which lack eyelids. When attacking, they roll their eyeballs back into the socket, exposing a tough layer of white cartilage to protect the eye. Authorities have not yet determined what species attacked Ismail.
Alone and bleeding, Ismail caught a wave that carried him roughly 66 feet toward shore. Running out of strength, he spotted fellow surfer Shannan Dunn coming down the dunes. Dunn rushed into the water and helped him onto his board, describing Dunn as having “eyes like saucers.”
“The first thing he (Dunn) said to me is, ‘Where’s the shark?’ I said ‘I don’t know. I’ve got a bit going on here,'” Ismail said.
Back on the beach, an onlooker fashioned a tourniquet from a leg rope while another called for an ambulance. Two teenagers helped lift Ismail into Dunn’s SUV, and the group drove along the beach to meet paramedics.
“I had a heap of people laughing, keeping me alive, keeping me positive in the back,” Ismail said. “I gave a few knuckles to the people there, because I was feeling good. I started to feel like I was going to make it.”
Four days after the Geraldton attack, 63-year-old swimmer Greg O’Neill was killed by a large white shark off Sorrento Beach in Perth’s northern suburbs, about 250 miles south of where Ismail was attacked.
Ismail said he plans to return to the water as a bodyboarder.
A deadly year in Australian waters
There have been five fatal shark attacks in Australia this year. Three spearfishing divers were killed off the coast between May and June, and in January a 12-year-old boy died in hospital days after being mauled by a bull shark in Sydney Harbour.
According to the Australian Shark Incident Database, a partnership involving Taronga Conservation Society Australia, Flinders University and the New South Wales government, Australia has averaged between two and three fatal shark attacks a year since 2000.
