A 61-year-old Oregon is the victim of a Hawaii shark attack but he lived to tell the tale.
Tom Kennedy of Lake Oswego, Ore., was enjoying the beauty of Kihei in Maui, Hawaii on Friday and participating in a snorkeling outing when he was attacked by a 10-foot shark in the morning. He was about 250 yards off the shore when the attack occurred. Luckily, the shark only bit Kennedy in the calf and he is now recovering from the injury.
"Initially it didn't hurt so much. It was mostly just fear of a second attack," Kennedy recalled about being bitten by the shark, according to Hawaii News Now.
"I kept watching behind because I was concerned it would come back again," Kennedy told ABC.
At one point Kennedy was able to swim away from the shark when it let go of its hold on him.
"It released me and I started swimming as fast as I could...as I went further and started to bleed, I could see I was trailing blood, which was my next concern," Kennedy said.
Kennedy was safely able to make it back to his paddleboard and got to shore with the help of a fellow snorkeler who happened to be an emergency room nurse. The nurse began first aid by using the paddleboard leash as a makeshift tourniquet. She assisted him until police and EMT's showed up and he was taken to the Maui Medical Center to be treated.
Kennedy's injury could have been worse than it was it the shark but into one of his major arteries, but doctors say this wasn't the case. Experts believe the shark was a tiger shark after hearing Kennedy's description.
A witness said paddleboarding and snorkeling int he area is a common hobby among locals and visitors.
"People who were in a canoe were in the area, so they brought him in," eyewitness Ryan Suda told Hawaii News Now. "They said he was standup paddle boarding like a lot of people do. They'll standup paddle board out to an area and go snorkeling. I do that myself."
This is the fourth time a shark has attacked a person since October. Diver Marc Riglos was bitten in his right leg by a 15-foot tiger shark on November 4. In October a tourist from California was injured when he had to fight off a shark and another tiger shark bit someone's paddleboard, Hawaii News Now reports.
The water was closed for two miles after Friday's attack.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
