Surfer
Todd Endris needed a miracle. The shark — a monster
great white that came out of nowhere — had hit him
three times, peeling the skin off his back and mauling his
right leg to the bone.
That’s
when a pod of bottlenose dolphins intervened, forming a
protective ring around Endris, allowing him to get to shore,
where quick first aid provided by a friend saved his life.
“Truly
a miracle,” Endris told TODAY’s Natalie Morales
on Thursday.
The
attack occurred on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2007 just before 11
a.m. at Marina State Park off Monterey, Calif., where the
24-year-old owner of Monterey Aquarium Services had gone
with friends for a day of the sport they love. Nearly four
months later, Endris, who is still undergoing physical therapy
to repair muscle damage suffered during the attack, is back
in the water and on his board in the same spot where he
almost lost his life.
“[It]
came out of nowhere. There’s no warning at all.
Maybe
I saw him a quarter second before it hit me. But no warning.
It was just a giant shark,” Endris said. “It
just shows you what a perfect predator they really are.”
The
shark, estimated at 12 to 15 feet long, hit him first as
Endris was sitting on his surfboard, but couldn’t
get its monster jaws around both surfer and surfboard. “The
second time, he came down and clamped on my torso —
sandwiched my board and my torso in his mouth,” Endris
said.
That
attack shredded his back, literally peeling the skin back,
he said, “like a banana peel.” But because Endris’
stomach was pressed to the surfboard, his intestines and
internal organs were protected.
The
third time, the shark tried to swallow Endris’ right
leg, and he said that was actually a good thing, because
the shark’s grip anchored him while he kicked the
beast in the head and snout with his left leg until it let
go.
The
dolphins, which had been cavorting in the surf all along,
showed up then. They circled him, keeping the shark at bay,
and enabled Endris to get back on his board and catch a
wave to the shore.
Our
finned friends:
No one knows why dolphins protect humans, but stories of
the marine mammals rescuing humans go back to ancient Greece,
according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.
A
year ago in New Zealand, the group reports, four lifeguards
were saved from sharks in the same way Endris was —
by dolphins forming a protective ring.
Though
horribly wounded, Endris said he didn’t think he was
going to die. “Actually, it never crossed my mind,”
he told Morales.
It
did, though, cross the minds of others on the beach, including
some lifeguards who told his friend, Brian Simpson, that
Endris wasn’t going to make it.
Simpson
is an X-ray technician in a hospital trauma center, and
he’d seen badly injured people before. He had seen
Endris coming in and knew he was hurt.
“I
was expecting him to have leg injuries,” he told Morales.
“It was a lot worse than I was expecting.”
Blood
was pumping out of the leg, which had been bitten to the
bone, and Endris, who lost half his blood, was ashen white.
To stop the blood loss, Simpson used his surf leash as a
tourniquet, which probably saved his life.
“Thanks
to this guy,” Endris said, referring to Simpson, who
sat next to him in the TODAY studio, “once I got to
the beach, he was calming me down and keeping me from losing
more blood by telling me to slow my breathing and really
just be calm. They wouldn’t let me look at my wounds
at all, which really helped.
A
medivac helicopter took him to a hospital, where a surgeon
had to first figure out what went where before putting him
back together.
“It
was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle,” Endris
said.
Six
weeks later, he was well enough to go surfing again, and
the place he went was back to Marina State Park. It wasn’t
easy to go back in the water.
“You
really have to face your fears,” he told Morales.
“I’m a surfer at heart, and that’s not
something I can give up real easily. It was hard. But it
was something you have to do.”
The
shark went on its way, protected inside the waters of the
park, which is a marine wildlife refuge. Endris wouldn’t
want it any other way.
“I
wouldn’t want to go after the shark anyway,”
he said. “We’re in his realm, not the other
way around.”
International
Shark Attack Research Foundation: Learn more about the organization
and their work to prevent shark attacks by visiting this
site.
11/8/2007
9:57:59 AM ET
© 2011 MSNBC Interactive.
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