Shark attack victim standing in mid-water reveals his hours-long ordeal trying to get help after the predator clung to his legs and feet
- Adam Norton was bitten twice by a ten foot shark
- An oil and gas vessel came to the rescue after hours
- Mr Norton recalled the ‘freak event’ on 6PR Breakfast
A man who was bitten by a shark twice had to wait hours for help on a remote island.
Adam Norton was fishing off the coast of Pilbara in Western Australia with his brother and friends on Thursday when they moored close to the Montebello Islands, about 80 miles from the WA mainland, in the evening.
“It was about 6pm – I was just cleaning the boat, going back to shore to get some beer and get out again, and then I got bit,” Norton told radio 6PR Breakfast.
Adam Norton (pictured) was bitten twice by sharks and had to wait hours on a remote island for help to arrive
Mr. Norton was first bitten in waist high water before the seven-foot or ten-foot nurse or lemon shark came back and got his foot in a second attack.
“It was about to my waist, the first initial bite was just below the knee, I started running, it came back and got me again,” said Mr Norton.
‘Initially the adrenaline got me onto the beach, but after that I didn’t really feel anything anymore.
“I could clearly see that I was not in great shape. The guys I was with are all trained in emergency response so they put a tourniquet on my leg and bandaged it – if you sit there for a while you panic but she kept me pretty calm.
Mr. Norton was picked up by a Santos oil and gas vessel about three hours later.
“The sharks were still in the water, so we couldn’t really get back to the boat,” Norton said.
“They couldn’t land a helicopter on the island, so they had to send a boat.”
He was taken to nearby Barrow Island and then flown to hospital for treatment.
“I have a pretty decent wound on the bottom of my foot,” Mr Norton told 6PR’s Steve Mills and Karl Langdon on Monday after his release from hospital over the weekend.
“The surgeon told me that you get worse injuries if you fall off a balance bike, so that made me feel good.
Mr Norton was first bitten in savage high water before the ten-foot shark came back and got his foot in a second attack
“Sharks aplenty in the northwest from Exmouth,” Mr. Norton said
‘When you’re diving you never take unnecessary risks for a fish, you always have as much control as possible.
“But this incident was really just a weird occurrence. Some people I spoke to in the game said it’s pretty bizarre.”
The incident comes nearly two months after the fatal shark attack that killed 16-year-old Stella Berry, who was mauled while swimming in North Fremantle’s Swan River on February 4.