Terrifying GoPro footage captured the moment an alligator clamped down on the head of a shark’s tooth collector as he waded through a Florida river.
Jeff Heim, a collector specializing in ancient megalodon teeth, this week recalled his 2021 death throes, saying the alligator bit him “twice before I knew it.”
‘It was very powerful. It looked much bigger than it actually was,” he said Florida fourth estate.
He believes he was only spared by the waterproof camera strapped to his head – which captured the crazy ordeal – and if he hadn’t been wearing the camera “my head would have exploded.”
Jeff Heim, a professional shark tooth collector, was bitten twice in the head by a crocodile in a frenzied attack in Florida’s Myakka River in 2021
Heim received 34 staples to his head after the attack, but he credited a GoPro on his head with saving his life, saying that if he hadn’t been wearing the camera “my head would have exploded”
Heim said the attack came as he was steadily searching the bottom of Florida’s Myakka River for megalodon teeth, and believed the beast’s first blow was a boat chopping off its head.
“That, to me, is why it wasn’t as scary, because there’s no expectation,” he said. “It’s like you blink and things are different.”
As the alligator made contact, Heim’s GoPro captured the moment the murky water in front of him filled with bubbles as he raged in a moment of reaction.
He says he quickly calmed down thanks to his understanding of the predators when the alligator went back in for another bite, saying, “You never want to hit or splash or act like prey, so I stayed calm.”
Heim avoided several more attempts at the alligator’s attacks in the muddy river, from which he “slowly and calmly backed away,” which he managed to do because he had “dive around sharks” before.
He said the extent of his injuries was not immediately apparent to him until he felt a large flap of his skull had been torn from his head in the shape of the alligator’s snout.
“This one’s torn open,” he said, pointing to a large U-shaped scar on the side of his head. “And it fluttered and hung like that.”
After climbing to the riverbank and calling for help at a nearby restaurant, he was rushed to hospital, where paramedics stapled his head 34 times, leading to eerie images of large scars zigzagging across his scalp.
Heim was also bitten on the hand during the attack and was treated for serious stab wounds.
The shark tooth collector said the near-death experience only dawned on him when he arrived at a hospital, where a paramedic warned him there would be “a lot of people” watching him.
The attack took place on the Myakka River in Florida
Heim’s horrific head wounds nearly caused him to lose much of his head and left long scars zigzagging across his scalp.
He said the near-death experience only dawned on him after a paramedic warned him that “a lot of people” would be watching him when he arrived at the hospital.
“I was just pretty crazy, the seriousness of the moment hadn’t sunk in yet… I was kind of light-hearted about it and trying to be funny,” he said, admitting he even tried to sell his social media handles for nurses in the middle of the attention.
Conservationists captured the alligator after the incident and measured it at 6 feet, but Heim said much of its tail was missing and it was probably closer to 8 feet.
The nature lover insisted that the alligator should not be put to death after the attack, and he recalled pleading from his hospital bed, “Whatever you can do, please don’t kill that alligator, I was in her house.”
But in an ironic twist, he said that as the conservationists approached the alligator, which they had no intention of killing anyway, a huge 13-foot alligator unexpectedly jumped out of the water and attacked and killed the animal.
Now, two years later and with his injuries healed, Heim says he calls the GoPro on his head to deflect some of the attack and save his life, saying, “I still don’t think I felt the full power of it. bite.’
“And if I had, my head would have exploded.”
Although he continues to dive for megalodon teeth regularly and donates the profits to wildlife organizations, Heim added that he takes a much safer approach these days and believes he was reckless.
He concludes: ‘I knew the dangers, but I don’t think I took them seriously enough at the time.’
Years after his brush with death, Heim concluded that he didn’t take the dangers of lurking around alligators “seriously enough” at the time.
Despite nearly losing his head in the attack, Heim was far from deterred from diving into dangerous waters again and continued building his business. SHRKcothat collects and sells old shark teeth.
Just two months after the alligator chew, he also made his best catch yet, when he pulled a “miracle” 6-inch megalodon tooth from a Florida seabed.
In images shared with TikTok which has been viewed more than 4.5 million times, the giant tooth was seen buried in deep green seawater, before Heim was visibly ecstatic when he picked it up.
He described the find as ‘one of the best days of my life’, shouting with joy as he emerged from the water with the half-metre tooth in his hand.