Shark vs. Surfer

Sharing the ocean with nature, is not without risks.

One of the most frightening is a shark attack.

The top half of her leg's gone.

And on the frontline surfers and

others using boards make up over 50% of attacks.

We have to get out of the water, I'm bleeding.

You don't think it's real, blood everywhere.

Oh, shark!

It's Spring, 2017.

Surfer, Dusty Phillips and his partner,

Leeanne Ericson have been together for three and a half years.

As a weekend break they chose San Onofre Beach.

A magnet for swimmers, surfers...

And sharks.

Some 60 varieties swim off the coast of California.

Mostly harmless to humans.

But lurking in the depths.

The tiger shark and great white.

It was so beautiful that weekend.

The water so blue and sparkly.

All the guys had their boards, I was the only one swimming.

Leanne and I were about 100 yards out floating around

in the water having our fun.

We had noticed a sea lion had surfaced to my left

and looked right at us and I looked at Dusty and I said,

"That sea lion looks a little panicked to me,"

and then right away he dipped back down under and was gone.

I pull the board out from under to turn to paddle for a wave.

I started to turn away back to shore to swim in.

As soon as I turn to start to paddle.

A shark had grabbed me by my right upper thigh,

I felt this razor blades go into my leg,

I screamed as loud as I could.

And the scream disappeared under the water.

A scream that piercing, you know sends chills up your spine.

I remember thinking about Dusty not knowing

where I was or what was happening to me.

I looked around, waited, waited, waited.

She never surfaced, wasn't nowhere to be found, she's gone.

I remember trying to push the shark off of my leg.

I went maybe 25, 30 feet, it was deep enough that I could

notice the, the light change and it was getting darker and

darker the further I was going down.

I jump off my board and look for her under the water

and she wasn't under the water.

It was very quiet and calm and peaceful it was under the water.

The only thing I could find was its eye

and so my whole hand just went into his eye and

I stuck it in as deep as I could

and it was super soft; it felt like I stuck my hand

in a cup of Jell-o and then the shark jerked its face away

from me and I was swimming to the surface.

I pick her up out of the water to set her up on

my surfboard and the top half of her leg's gone.

That's when... Got real.

I was just in a red blood pool and

little bits of my fat was floating around in the water.

I yell multiple times, "Shark, help!"

Everybody was still playing football on the beach,

the kids were still running around.

Nobody knew what was happening.

We get into waist to knee high deep water,

and we are getting some people coming out and helping us.

Paramedic!

What is the emergency.

Somebody was bit by a shark.

Lucky for Leeanne, there's a marine base nearby

with an emergency medical team ready to go.

By the time we get her up onto the beach

the paramedics are pulling in.

So, we are literally setting her down in a cloud of dust.

She wasn't even really bleeding anymore,

I mean, at that point she had really lost all her blood,

she was just completely pale white.

And actually lifted up her leg at one time and

my first thought was, uh, that there is a chance her leg

could come off, there was no way she'd save that leg.

What's going through my head is like, "This is it."

You know I'd never told her I loved her before, till then.

And that was the first time he's ever told me that,

and I was thinking like, this of all times,

this is the time that you pick to tell me that you love me,

of all the times in the world,

but you know at least if I were to die at least

I would have heard it.

Leeanne is airlifted to a nearby hospital clinging to life.

The medic tells me, uh, they induced her into a coma,

we gotta' go now.

I'm sitting in the helicopter staring down at my family and

friends scurrying around the campground.

None of them know where we are going,

what condition she's in, what condition I'm in.

That was tough for me.

Leeanne's attacker is likely a juvenile,

three to four meter great white shark.

Fully grown adults can reach up to six meters.

Great whites are devastating hunters.

Reaching an attack speed of 40 kilometers an hour,

snapping their jaws with a strength of up to two tons.

If you had to imagine the perfect predator:

Performance, size, speed, teeth, intelligence;

Then it would be the great white shark.

If they want to hunt seals they will adopt one strategy

and they burst up.

Even juvenile, smaller, two and a half to three meter,

ten foot white sharks, if given the opportunity,

will have a go at bigger prey.

As surfers often wear black wetsuits they could

be mistaken for a seal the outcome could be deadly.

The great white, they have that dentition which is

that their teeth act like saws to pull big chunks out of prey.

It's very easy for them to hit arteries,

to open up arteries and the reason that people die

is because of blood loss.

Since 2001, sharks have attacked 55 people

along the Californian Coast.

In Leeanne's case, there may be a logical explanation.

In California, the sea lions

are protected and the population is growing,

the great whites are also protected.

The likelihood of those two species coming into contact,

is growing every year.

If you choose to go and swim around these sea lions,

where you know great whites are,

I would say it's not a really smart move.

The great white is patrolling,

what he's looking for is a silhouette of a sea lion.

If you're looking for an explanation of why that

great white shark attacked Leeanne, the fact that she was

swimming in an area abundant with sea lions,

then the explanation is probably mistaken identity.

Leeanne spent nine weeks in hospital

undergoing multiple surgeries,

blood transfusions and skin grafts.

I'm just going to put it here.

Most of my hamstring and my glutes are gone,

my quad is gone.

It looks good, I think this is the best outcome,

he didn't go deep enough to get to the bone.

Pretty much everything is gone.

Probably at the seven week mark is when I finally started

looking back at my leg, at what it looked like.

There is some here.

That was the graft that went over the nerve.

See this? Yeah.

This is where... Right here.

They took the skin graft from my left leg to put over

my right to close the wound.

Good, that's really good.

And I said, "Oh my God,

thank God you didn't take my leg off."

There's no cushion over my hip joint anymore so laying on my side...

I can only do that for so long,

I can only sit for so long, I can only stand for so long.

Besides mistaken identity,

there's another factor linked to attacks on surfers.

And that's time of day.

Considered the birthplace of big wave surfing, Hawaii,

is known for some of the best waves on the planet.

But here to, there's danger below,

with 120 attacks in the past 25 years.

Oh my God!

Oh, he's going to swim right into it.

Many from the second most deadly shark species

known to kill humans.

The tiger shark.

Brazilian born, Marjorie Mariano has been

surfing Oahu Island for over 20 years.

I kind of made my life focus on surfing

because I consider myself a surfaholic.

I live and breathe for surfing.

In December, 2017, Marjorie's world shattered.

A community is in mourning tonight after a

well known mom was brutally murdered inside a North Shore Home.

I had bad news that my best friend Thelma got murdered.

She was my surf partner, my friend.

The most important person in my life here in Hawaii.

Heartbroken, Marjorie honors her lost friend

with a sunset surf on the very last day of 2017.

My plan was to go and paddle out to surf

to cleanse and forget the whole sadness

at the incident with my best friend.

So I went surf to get myself a little bit stronger.

I decided I'm gonna go just for 30 minutes

just to do closure this year

and I am gonna go for Thelma.

I turn and try to catch a wave.

Suddenly my life changed

180 degrees.

Something hit me.

I never in my mind thought it was a shark.

New Year's Eve, 2017.

Marjorie Mariano just lost her best friend to a brutal murder.

She hopes a sunset surf will bring her some peace.

But tragedy strikes again.

Suddenly my life changed in a matter of seconds.

I never see fin.

I never see shadow.

I felt something really hard on my leg.

It was just like boom.