Nastya Vitonova, Russian singer and influencer, thought she was going to die after being attacked by a shark in the Maldives. Vitonova was snorkeling when a shark bit her, and footage shows her hand gushing blood while spectators pour water over her wound.
“I got bitten by a shark,” she says while crying, as somebody aboard the boat tells her “You’re bleeding really badly.” “I won’t die of blood infection?,” Vitonova responded.
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“No, no, no, with sharks, the most important thing is that they don’t bite your finger off,” she was told by fellow social media personality Isabelle Zagfarova. “You won’t get a blood infection.”
“I’m having a panic attack,” said Vitonova, who is known for her music and has almost 100,000 Instagram followers.
Swimming with sharks is a popular activity in the Maldives, but some encounters can turn deadly, like with Elena Boyko, a Russian influencer who was also recently bitten by a shark. Vitonova was in a group of 12 on a ‘swim with sharks’ expedition.
“There was horror inside, I was shaking all overโฆ. I realised that it was good, that it all ended with just my hand,” Vitonova said. “But then the realisation came, and finally the emotions came out. I started crying really hard, sometimes I couldn’t breathe from the shock. [The shark] bit [my finger] to the bone, now there is a small bump at the site of the stitch. But it is healing.”
Both recent shark attacks mentioned are believed to have been by nurse sharks in the Maldives.
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