Angry shark bites man at nudist beach after he accidentally headbutts it
It seems natural enough that if you headbutt somebody, they may get angry and try to fight back. But what happens if you didn’t mean to do it — and the thing you headbutted is actually a shark?
One man found out over the weekend.
“I went to catch the last wave back in, put my head down and headbutted the shark,” 51-year-old Paul Kenny said, according to the Australian Associated Press. “I was in his world. He was just going about his business and I headbutted him so he retaliated.”
Kenny was surfing off Samurai Beach, a nude beach in Australia, although it was not clear whether he was naked as he swam offshore, 9 News Australia reported.
When he headbutted the shark, Kenny said the animal grabbed his arm in its teeth and held fast, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“I didn’t know where it was and if it was going to take my legs,” he said, according to the Australian AP.
He thought back to one of his heroes, a former pro-surfer named Mick Fanning who punched a shark as it dragged him through the water at a 2015 surf competition in South Africa. “I thought of it, since he did that, well, what else can you do. I was thinking of it as I was punching the shark,” Kenny said in an interview with the ABC.
He pummeled the animal enough that it gave up and swam away. Kenny made it to shore, where Chris Stewart, an eyewitness who was camping on the beach, found him and called authorities, Sky News reported.
“We woke up on the beach, went for a walk, saw a bloke walk down to the surf and I said to the missus, ‘I wouldn’t go swimming out there, there’s probably sharks out there’ and within about two minutes he came back into the beach screaming out for help, so we’ve run down with a couple of other boys,” Stewart said, according to the network. “(He was) bleeding on the bicep, bleeding on the leg, wrapped him up with some bandages and called triple 0 (the Australian equivalent to 911 in America).”
Paramedics arrived and bandaged his wound before taking him to the hospital, where his wound was described as not-life-threatening, according to 9 News.
“I’m on Endone and paracetamol (painkillers) and a lot of antibiotics because it’s a marine bite. I’m sore for sure, but it’s not really bad,” Kenny said, according to the Newcastle Herald. “I’ll be back in the water for sure.”
The beach and the area around it had previously been closed after a whale carcass washed ashore, raising fears of increased shark numbers, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.