Surfing off Western Australia’s coast, firefighter Mel Ismail says he locked eyes with the shark that tore off his lower leg—and tried to gouge its eye as it dragged him under. He tells the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he at first thought he’d been bumped by a dolphin at Glenfield Beach near Geraldton on Sept. 14, he quickly realized it was a shark as it grabbed him and pulled him underwater.
“I got to a point where I saw its eye … a big black eye,” Ismail says. “But it’s winking back at me—I was trying to get my fingers in its eye and just pushing its eye as I was being dragged. I personally reckon it gave me the wink, and then shut my leg off, and I knew it had taken my leg.” Many shark species don’t have eyelids, but they roll their eyes back as a protective measure when attacking prey, the AP reports.
He managed to make it back to the surface, with his right leg severed below the knee. “I saw my board floating around, a heap of blood. I thought, ‘He’s coming back for more; I need to get out of here,'” Ismail says. He caught a wave toward shore, spotted a man on the dunes, and signaled for help. Surfer Shannan Dunn paddled out and put him on his board. “The first thing he said to me is, ‘Where’s the shark?'” Ismail says. “I said, ‘I don’t know, I’ve got a bit going on here.”A couple on the beach improvised a tourniquet before a frantic dash down the beach in Dunn’s SUV to meet paramedics. He says it was a huge relief to see an ambulance, crewed by people he had worked with for years.
Kylie Fleay, Ismail’s partner, was on her first solo shift on the switchboard at the Geraldton hospital and heard about the shark attack. She says when she found out Ismail was the victim, she ran to the ER, where he was “gray and sandy.” She says she initially thought the shark “just had a little nibble of him” and was shocked by the extent of his injuries. Ismail plans to return to the water. “First thing he says, he goes, ‘I’m going to have to be a bodyboarder now,'” Fleay says. Five people have been killed by sharks in Australia so far this year, including a man who was killed off a beach in Perth, around 250 miles south of Geraldton, four days after Ismail was attacked.