A swimmer went through a terrifying ordeal earlier this month when a nurse shark latched onto his stomach and refused to let go.
Ervin Maccarty was retrieving lobsters off the coast of Marathon, Florida, when the attack occurred.
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The small shark ran into him and bit into his midsection. Maccarty tried to fight it off but almost drowned in the process.
“I struggled to get back to the boat,” he said. “(The shark) hit me hard. It knocked the breath out of me so I had to get up for air but I felt the shark biting and trying to tear me open. I thought I would drown.”
He then managed to get into the boat with his friends, who then began videoing the encounter.
“I had to get to the boat with no hands to swim with,” he said. “It was a struggle and it wore me out. I eventually got there. The video tells the rest.”
The swimmer is shown lying on his back with the shark still latched onto his abdomen. His friends then begin to stab the creature to cause it to bleed out and let go of Maccarty. The plan worked, and the shark let go of him.
Maccarty was okay after the incident, with only some minor bleeding and some nasty puncture wounds.
