A giant 12-foot shark brutally attacked a diver and ripped into his wrist leaving his wrist hanging from the bone and the water filled with blood. Alvaro Ordonez was mauled just feet away from pal Tracy Wollschlager but now she can't wait to get back into the water. The maths professor claims sharks are like "curious puppies", even though experienced diver Alvaro was at risk of bleeding to death. Tracy was spearfishing in the sea with experienced divers Alvaro, 60, and Eric Salado, 62, both medical professionals. Just two minutes after they got into the water they were surrounded by 10 bull sharks, considered to be the most dangerous in the world. The 28-year-old said: "Alvaro had shot a fish very close to the shark and that had clearly got her angry."Suddenly, I saw her charging at him and then the water exploded with a cloud of blood."The shark, which Tracy believes was pregnant as her sides were 'bulging', then went for her but the quick-thinking academic managed to ward it off by prodding its nose with the tip of her speargun. Fortunately, with lightning speed, Eric hauled their injured friend into their waiting boat and Alvaro instructed Tracy to cut the arm off his wetsuit and wrap a shirt around his wrist. Tracy said: "I was really freaking out, thinking to myself over and over again, 'This can't be happening'.
"I was struggling to keep calm, seeing how bad the gash on his wrist was. Given how much blood was pouring out, it could easily have killed him."Making it back to Miami, which was 30 minutes away, they were met by an ambulance that rushed Alvaro off to the emergency room where hospital doctors were able to patch him up. But Tracy, whose partner Nick Wood, 32, is a fishing guide, has not let last month's deep sea terror put her off fishing. The professor, who as well as working at Fort Lauderdale's Broward College, Florida, is also a yacht broker, said: "I haven't had time yet to go fishing again, but I've been dying to get out there."The shark attack was pretty scary, but I know I have to dive again and face up to it because, in reality, what happened isn't a normal experience at all.
For the most part, sharks really don't have any interest in eating us. They are just like curious puppies - albeit with quite big sharp teeth."Tracy was taken on regular angling trips with her dad in the Atlantic Ocean as a child and has been fishing since she was old enough to hold a rod. She started spearfishing which involves diving into the water and shooting fish at close-range with a speargun in 2016, as her then-boyfriend was a speargun maker.Soon "addicted" to the sport she would go either mile out to sea or along the coastline hunting for snappers, groupers and jacks whenever she had time. And when Alvaro and Eric, two accomplished spearfishermen who she met in mid-2018 through the local angling community, suggested they go on a trip together, Tracy jumped at the chance.
She said: "We were about three miles from the coast in Alvaro's Contender fishing boat, at a spot where we had often been to, just above a shipwreck when it happened."We were really excited because there were lots of cobia fish about and it was like heaven for a fisherman, as they are pretty rare."But that also meant that there was shark around too because cobia often swim close to sharks."The 10 bull sharks a breed ranked alongside great whites and tiger sharks as the most dangerous to humans emerged from the murky waters beneath them. Initially uninterested in the divers, their attention was grabbed when Alvaro shot a cobia fish off the back of the biggest bull.
"He started swimming back to the boat to get back in with the fish he'd just shot and all of a sudden the shark went for him."Just 10 feet away from him as the 12-foot predator tore Alvaro's flesh, Tracy only narrowly avoided a mauling of her own from the enraged shark, which also lunged towards her. After fending it off with her spear, she helped her fellow-fisherman into the boat, where the extent of Alvaro's injuries became clear. Realising they had to act fast, Tracy tried to stem the flow of blood and clean the wound as best she could use her shirt.
Eric made a tourniquet from a bungee on a torch and called the emergency services, who sent an ambulance to the shore to wait for them. Tracy said: "It was a race against the clock to get back to land, as we were really worried because there was so much blood and we thought Alvaro could easily bleed out."Luckily, their emergency first aid did the job and Alvaro made it to the ambulance, which rushed him to the Ryder Trauma Centre in Miami. As a dentist, the concern was that his hand may be irreparably damaged but after a five-hour operation to reconstruct his ligaments and tendons, surgeons were able to confirm that he would soon enough regain full mobility. A month on, he is now back at work and, like Tracy, is raring to get back out on the water again.
She said: "We have to realize that these things don't happen very often, and while Alvaro was really lucky to make it out alive from that situation, he was also really unlucky to have been bitten in the first place."We know the risks as spearfishers of this sort of thing happening and I guess we might be a little warmer in future."But nothing - not even a shark - can stop us from going out in the water."Alvaro, who plans to get back in the water after his wound heals in a few weeks’ time, said: "Seeing the shark coming, my first thought was 'I'm gonna get it.'"So I waited until the very last moment and tried to grab the shark on the gills to get away from its jaws."It was a pretty dangerous place to find yourself, but the experience hasn't put me off diving or sharks."As a conservationist, I love sharks and I treat them in the same way other people treat dogs."You can sometimes get into scraps with them, but they are a nice company to have in the water."