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A fisherman tried to pose with a shark, only for the animal to bite him on the leg on an island in Florida on Aug. 16The injured man had to be airlifted to a hospital due to his injury“It’s just a reminder to stay alert when you’re out in nature,” Boca Grande Fire Chief C.W. Blosser said
A fisherman who was bitten while posing for a photo with a shark is reflecting on the scary moment.
On the evening of Saturday, Aug. 16, Shawn Meuse was on a birthday fishing trip with his friends on Cayo Costa, an island near Boca Grande, Fla., when he decided to pose with a lemon shark, NBC affiliate WBBH reported.
In a reel shared on his Facebook page, Meuse can be seen holding the top of the shark’s mouth when it jerks out of the man’s hold and bites him before swimming into the surf.
“We just finished taking the hook out of his mouth. We were gonna go release him, and the shark just turned and bit me,” Meuse told CBS affiliate WINK. The man did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for further comment.
In the audio recording of a 911 call placed after the incident, another man can be heard saying that Meuse was awake and had a tourniquet around his leg to stop the bleeding, according to the outlet.
The Boca Grande Fire Department responded to the call about a shark bite at 10:55 p.m. local time and found the group of men at the south end of the island, Chief C.W. Blosser said in a public service announcement shared by Island TV for Boca Grande.
The victim and the group he was with had been shark fishing and were holding the shark on land when the incident occurred.
“The injuries were severe enough that it required air medical transport,” Blosser continued in the announcement.
Following the attack, Meuse was scheduled to have surgery on his injured leg on Tuesday, Aug. 19.
“I’m unlucky or lucky at the same time,” he told WBBH from his hospital bed. “Because, you know, if it was a few inches one way, you know, I might not be here.”
Two days after the dangerous incident, Meuse told WINK that he’d go back to the beach that same day if he could leave the hospital. He also had a message for the shark that bit him: “See you next time.”
Officials warn that there are many sharks in the surrounding waterways, and it is possible to come into contact with them.
“When you push on Mother Nature, she’ll push back,” Blosser tells PEOPLE. The fire chief confirms that the victim is doing well, as of Wednesday, Aug. 20.
Lemon sharks are a native species and are prohibited from being harvested from Florida state waters, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says.
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While Meuse told WBBH that he doesn’t have a permit for shark fishing, he said that he wasn’t the one who caught the lemon shark.
Permit or not, naturalist Rob Howell wasn’t impressed with what he saw play out in the video.
“That shark wanted to get back to the water as quick as possible,” Howell told the outlet. “It was in pain and scared, and not a lot of people give these animals the respect that they deserve, and I didn’t see any respect in that video.”