A 40-year-old man was rushed to the hospital after he was attacked by a shark while surfing at a Florida beach.
Matthew Bender was bitten on his right forearm while surfing off New Smyrna Beach last Sunday.
He told FOX affiliate WOFL that it all happened so fast.
“I felt it clamp down like a bear trap out of nowhere and by the time I looked down, it was already gone. I never saw the shark. It felt like electricity and like extreme pressure, and then it, I think, shook its head. I definitely felt that as it was letting go. It was all so fast,” he said.
Bender said when he looked at his arm, he was shocked.
“When I looked down, my arm was like completely mangled, basically. So I’m, I couldn’t believe that, it’s a miracle my hand was still working fine even before they did the surgery,” he said. “I was squirting blood from the bottom of my thumb all the way to almost like a few inches from my elbow really, like it was, it’s big.”
He was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Other surfers at New Smyrna Beach expressed concerns about the sharks.
Caleb Grant/Surfer: “Every time I go out I know like, I could definitely get bit. So for me it’s just you know, another occurrence that we expect to happen,” Caleb Grant said. “Honestly I just say a little prayer, get out there and just have fun. Stay close to my buddies and just keep a lookout.”
This is the second reported shark encounter in New Smyrna Beach in the past month.
A surfer said an airborne spinner shark knocked him off his board in June.
New Smyrna Beach is known as the “Shark Bite Capital of the World.” It’s been the site of more than 300 shark attacks since the 1980s, according to the International Shark Attack File in Gainesville.
