A South Carolina surfer has shown off the horrific facial scars he suffered this week when a shark bit him off the coast of Florida – recalling the horrifying “tumult” as it crushed his face “like a bear trap.”
“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through in my life. I was in a bad car accident. Nothing like this,” Mark Sumersett, 38, told WESH of the close encounter that happened when he fell off his surfboard in the waters off New Smyrna Beach just before 8 a.m. Tuesday.
“It’s pressure, and I’ll tell you the pressure, it’s like a crisis. I heard a bang. It felt like a bear trap crushed my face,” Sumersett, who lives in Charleston, said of the moment the shark’s teeth tore into his face.
The toothy creature quickly released him, he remembered, but not before removing a large chunk from the right side of his face.
“I jumped on my board and paddled in. I think the mamat will come back for me. I thought he was because I was bleeding badly,” Sumersett said of his desperate escape.
Mark Sumersett was bitten in the face by a shark on Tuesday morning.WESH
He was taken to hospital, but was released after receiving about 20 stitches to a cut on his face.
Sumersett’s injury marks the seventh shark bite in Volusia County this year — and the first face bite on record, WESH said.
Sumersett’s father shared a photo on Facebook of a doctor stitching up a severe skin tear from the attack — one the surfer said he had a hunch about.
“I have feelings. I have a feeling I’ll get some yesterday. I really do. To be honest, I have an intuition,” Sumersett, who was down in Florida to enjoy the waves from Hurricane Lee on Monday.
There were multiple sharks spotted off New Smyrna Beach around the time Sumersett was attacked.WESH
Even before the incident, he told WESH, he and other surfers saw a number of sharks in the area.
He now thinks the shark may have noticed the gold chain around his neck and mistook him for food while tracking the tug in the seven-foot whitewater zone.
Despite the shock, the surfer maintains he will be back riding the waves as soon as possible.
“Yes, I will surf again,” he said.
“Because I like it. Nothing in the world makes me feel better than surfing.”
Sumersett said the attack won’t stop him from surfing again.WESH
Other surfers in the area expressed a similar desire not to let the fear of shark bites stop them from getting in the water.
“Nine times out of 10, it’s because [the surfers] fall into shallow water and scare the shark, and it is a response bite. It’s not like the shark just chases them,” longtime surfer Rob Robinson, who arrived in New Smyrna Beach shortly after the attack on the Sumersett, told the outlet.
“They’re just creatures looking for food, you know? Like me and you. And when you go into the water, you enter the food chain,” added another surfer, Daniel Hanson.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
