Another shark hit - Florida

[DandyDon]

VIDEO: Man gets attacked by shark on New Year’s Day 70 miles off Pensacola​

PENSACOLA, Fla. (WKRG) — It was a New Year’s Day to remember for Chad Patti, after being attacked by a Mako shark while spearfishing 70 miles off Pensacola Beach. He was uninjured.

Patti has been deep sea fishing for the past three years and said he has seen two other sharks while diving, but none had attacked before.

“The first one I saw was a good 14-to-15 feet long,” Patti said. “The second one I saw was in Mississippi.”

Right at 2:50 p.m., in the afternoon on the last dive of the day, the Mako took a swipe at Patti, who was fishing for Wahoo.

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“We knew that we needed to leave at 2:30 p.m., latest 3 p.m., that way we could get back before dark,” Patti said. “The [fish] were about 150 feet from me and I was waiting. I did a dive about 70 feet because I saw a Wahoo, and when I came back up, I started looking around trying to see if I could get that one last fish. I start to swim forward and get ready to ask another question and then as soon as I open my mouth the shark blindsides me.”

Patti said there have been times before when he would have sharks try to steal fish, but he said he has never had one attack him.

“I was the prey, there was no mistaken identity,” Patti said. “It’s not like he bumped me checking me out, he crushed my fin. You can see he has the fin in his mouth, and you can see his jaw and gills tense up. Later in the video you can see he still has a piece of the fin in his mouth trying to figure out if it is food or not.”

While training to dive out in the ocean, Patti said you learn what to do when or if a shark comes.

“You want to treat it like a stray dog,” Patti said. “If you take off running, a stray dog is always going to take off after you. If you see a shark, don’t take your eyes off of it. You can tell by certain shark behavior, if he starts flexing, he could get aggressive. We just never saw this one, period. We were drifting on this spot for about an hour with three guys in the water, and I just happened to be the last diver to get out. We’ve thought back on the incident to see if there was something we would do different and all we can say is dive in teams of two.”

Despite the incident Patti said they are already “looking at next Saturday” to do it again.

 

[Robert H. Diver]

 

[Eric802]

You don’t hear about many incidents with makos.

 

[Johnoly]

Sharks are just part of speafishing and we deal with them almost every dive. Says he dropped his gun? WTH??

 

[drrich2]

I think he's very blessed to've gotten away unhurt and many of us are that this sort of thing doesn't happen a lot more often than we hear about. Thankfully sharks aren't the 'mindless eating machines' vilified in my youth, and our alien appearance and bubble blowing may count for something. Despite that, it's a wonder makos, oceanic white-tips and some others don't hit a lot more people.

 

[Grantt]

I have no issues with people spearfishing, just not my thing.
I really really really do not like DMing or even being on the same dive site with people spearfishing due to issues like this.
I'm glad this story turned out well.

 

[ROUS]

Wow, he's lucky. That could have been very bad.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Hmm. If that clip is being played at normal speed and that's the first he saw it, the mako looks like it just sidled up unseen, took a test bite of the fin, and left at a relatively leisurely pace. Not sure about the "knocked the gun out of his hand" bit; it's still clearly in the foreground as the shark is swimming off (could be buoyant, but doesn't look like it was sent flying).

I've been in the water with smaller makos (4-6 ft) in Cabo; the largest one we had was while the boat was getting pushed hard by the wind and it was a choice between having one arm jerked out of the socket holding the trailing line while trying to juggle the camera with the other, or letting go and kicking to keep up. The way it was manuvering effortlessly around me when I tried the latter reminded me of the F-14 vs. Zero dogfight in The Final Countdown, with me as the hapless prop plane going up against a jet fighter.