An Auburn University student is lucky to still have his arm after a shark attack off the Florida coast.
Brice Albert, 20, was vacationing with friends March 18 in Juno Beach, Florida.
“It was a beautiful day out,” Albert told Tracking Sharks. “Me and my buddies were just on the beach having fun. It was super sunny, but it was really windy. It felt like 20 mile per hour winds and the waves were really choppy.”
Despite choppy waters, three of the guys decided to hit the water for a second time that day.
Around 3:30 p.m. they waded 25 to 30 yards out from the beach in the chest deep water. While they tried to stay close together, the angle of the current pushed Brice nearly 50 feet from the pier.
That’s when he was slammed by something he best described as being kicked by a shoe with a metal cleats. “I thought one of my friends swam under the water and was messing with me,” he said.
When he looked for his friends, he realized they were 10 to 15 feet away and wondered if he had been hit by a pack of stingrays or floating debris. Then he looked at his left arm.
“When I brought my arm up, I saw the bite with my muscle and yellow fat bubbling and falling out of my arm,” he said. “I realized I got bit by something big. I still wasn’t thinking shark, because the chances are so low. It was never in mind until I saw how much blood.”
The public relations major surmises the shark’s teeth were so sharp that he never felt them cut his skin.
Not wanting to panic the large crowd on the beach, Albert covered his wound as best he could and called to his friends.
“I showed them my arm and they were like ‘oh sh*t’ and then helped me get up the sand and to the lifeguard station,” he said. Lifeguards wrapped Brice’s wound in gauze while his friends debated calling an ambulance. Because of the amount of traffic, they opted to drive.
It was a tough decision because a hematoma the size of a tennis ball was forming on the Brice’s wound. During the 25-minute drive, he called his parents, who thought he was joking about being bitten by a shark.
Once they arrived at St. Mary’s Medical Center, his friends’ gamble paid off because the hospital was equipped to deal with shark attacks. If Brice had been picked up by ambulance and taken to another hospital, he would have been airlifted to St. Mary’s.
At the hospital, doctors initially thought an amputation might be necessary.
“When they were touching my hand, I couldn’t feel anything and they thought I had a dead hand,” he said, because they believed a major artery had been damaged by the shark.
“In general, I am a calm and laid-back person, it’s how I live life. I don’t like to be in high drama intense situations, I like to be very relaxed in what I do. When this happened, I understood the gravity of what it could be . . . the doctors made it clear I could lose my arm. There is nothing that panicking or freaking out was going to change anything, what happened.”
Thankfully after surgery, he woke up to find his arm still attached and his father by his bedside.
After five nights and six days of IVs and blood tests he was able to go home to Naples.
He still has numbness and difficulty moving his hand, but has no ill will toward the estimated 6 foot blacktip shark.
“I’m honestly doing great. I have no bad juju or bad spirits toward the shark or anything. I am very lucky and fortunate that it wasn’t worse and thankful the doctor was able to save my arm. Honestly, it’s uncomfortable and the process is not fun, but it could have been worse. I could have not been here; I could have lost my arm. I really can’t be too upset about anything.”
The event will not keep him out of the water and he plans to visit the pier area again.
He also has a new interest in sharks.
“Growing up in Florida, I’ve never had a phobia of them. Now I have more of a respect for the animal. It’s now a part of me, for the rest of my life. I’ve researched sharks and want to get more acquainted with them.”
Continuing in good spirits, he has reached out to a child who was recently bitten by a shark in Miami. He is hoping to contact the young man and share some motivation for moving forward with this unusual new bond.
The location has been marked on the 2021 Shark Attack Map.
Image courtesy Brice Albert
