A South Carolina man has survived a run-in with a shark and is speaking about the experience after the fish bit him on the head while he and some friends were spearfishing in the Bahamas.
Will Krause of Charleston, 29, said he was visiting the region on Aug. 20 with some friends to fish in the area, as he has for the past five or six years.
On that day, what he called the “best day we had had yet,” they were swimming through the area looking for fish but had yet to find one.
When Krause’s friend Zachary Shipps shot their first fish, as seen from a GoPro video shot by Shipps, a shark darted out from underneath several rocks and coral.
“That shark dove in on the crew but he didn’t really go for the fish, for some reason, he darted towards me about, I was about 30 yards away from those guys,” Krause told Global News. “As you can see, he bit me in the back of the head, a quick bite, a quick shake and then was off. It happened really fast.”
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According to the 29-year-old, he and his family members who have gone with him on these trips have a rule that they don’t shoot fish in front of sharks as a show of respect because in the past when a fish is shot, sharks can show up.
In this situation, however, they had not seen a shark.
What was surprising to Krause was he didn’t expect to be bitten in the head.
After being bitten, he said Shipps immediately surfaced and pulled the bloody fish out of the water so it wouldn’t lure the shark. The other divers in the water, as well as Krause’s boss Stephen Murray who was on the trip, worked to get him above water and back on the boat nearby.
Asked what went through his mind when he was bitten, Krause said the only thing he could think of at the time was that he had been hit by the boat, but he later processed that boat was several feet above him in the water and could not have hit him.
Once he surfaced, he asked what happened and Shipps and the other divers could be heard on the video shouting, “Shark!”
“I don’t remember really feeling a lot of pain in the moment,” he said. “Of course, the adrenaline kicks and it felt like a life-or-death moment right away.”
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He said for some time, he couldn’t remember exactly what happened under the water, but after a couple of weeks, it “came back to me.”
From the bite, Krause suffered a mild concussion, lacerations to the neck and head. He said he also suffered “significant” blood loss but several of the guys on the boat got him bandages, put hands on the wounds to stop the bleeding until they got back to land. They were then able to get him to a “middle of nowhere” clinic where he received nine stitches.
“From there, I was back on my feet in an hour with the rest of the guys and the crew and I was on a flight the next day home,” he said.
Krause said he even drove home to his wife and one-and-a-half-year-old about eight hours from the airport, but added he didn’t receive suggestions from the doctor not to fly following his incident. He admits driving home, however, might not have been the smartest idea though he is feeling healthy with no long-term damage.
To this day, he’s still not sure why the shark went for him though he said they sent the footage to some scientists who hypothesized the animal might have seen him as another shark, which they will sometimes bite.
Following the incident, Krause said he’s grateful he was able to get home to his family and that it brought him and his friends even closer together.
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