On January 5, a man was bitten by a shark in Satellite Beach, Florida.
The 47-year-old was surfing in waters off Patrick Air Force Base Blockhouse Beach around 12:30 p.m. when he was bitten on the foot.
Johannes Friess who was visiting from Munich, Germany, heard his girlfriend yell to him that the unidentified man needed help. Friess paddled out to the man and assisted him back to shore.
Once they were back on the beach, Friess assessed the wound and noted several holes in the bottom of the man’s foot. Friess also saw the man had one deep hole that looked to be around a half-inch (1.27cm) deep and around 3 inches (7.62cm) long.
“He said he saw the shark biting him and out of reflex he pulled his foot away, and that’s what got such a long cut,” Friess told Fox35.
Friess used a surfboard leash to tie around the man’s leg to stop the bleeding.
“He was cool,” Friess said about the shark-bitten man. “He didn’t panic at all.”
The man was taken to the Holmes Regional Hospital for the non-life threatening bite.
This is the first reported shark attack bite of 2017.
Two shark attack bites occurred along Satellite Beach in 2015. In June a surfer was wading when he was bitten on his left leg, and in September 13-year-old Joshua Micheal Stuart was bitten on his left foot when he hopped off his board and onto a shark.
Neither surfer suffered severe injury. The first man refused medical transportation, but Stuart received six staples in his foot.
All locations are marked on the 2017 shark attack bites tracking map.
