Snorkeler Accidentally Catches Moment Shark Bites Off His Leg on Video
An Italian marine biology student studying in Australia is lucky to have escaped with his life after enduring a horrific shark attack off the coast of Queensland last Friday. And the gruesome ordeal was caught on video in real-time.
Matteo Mariotti, 20, had been filming while snorkeling at the remote 1770 Beach on the eastern shore of Australia when the shark suddenly attacked. In footage he has since posted to Instagram, you can see Mariotti struggling to swim to the surface and hear his muffled screams as the shark continues its attempts to pull him under.
Eventually, Mariotti’s friend came to his rescue, who he now credits with saving his life. Though, it was too late to save his leg, which has since been amputated.
“I played this video a few moments after the last bite, I wanted to say goodbye, I never thought I’d survive that monster,” he captioned the video. “Lost so much blood and my leg, I don’t know if they’re going to cut it all off or if it’s going to be left in half but it doesn’t matter now.” (Warning, the footage may be disturbing to some viewers.)
“I no longer have a leg but I’m alive, my grandfather protected me,” Mariotti later told the Italian newspaper L’Unione Sarda, following the attack.
“On Friday [at] 4.30 p.m. I had just learned that my grandfather Giovanni had died,” he explained while recovering from surgery at Brisbane Hospital, with another operation scheduled for Tuesday. “I needed to relax and I thought I’d take a swim not far from the shore, also because there were other people in the water. I put on the mask with the snorkel but I certainly wouldn’t have gone far; I also took a small camera to film the small fish, as I always do.”
However, after a few steps in the water, Mariotti said he felt a “terrible pang” in his foot. “In an instant the pain reached my entire leg, the shark began to drag me out to sea, until at a certain point I managed to grab its head with my hands,” he recalled. “I struggled to widen that big mouth and freed my leg, even though I understood that from the knee down there was nothing left.”
Mariotti said he tried to reach shore while screaming for his friend Tommaso, a nurse and diving instructor, who was on the beach. “He saved me, he recovered me, called for help, held my injured leg to stop the bleeding until the helicopter arrived,” he added. “Running, he carried me on his shoulder to the stretcher.”
He has since set up a GoFundMe to help pay for his medical care, and has already raised €44,038 of his €50,000 goal.
