A Fort Lauderdale teen was surfing the sweet waves of Melbourne, Florida, when the good times suddenly came to a gnarly end after he was attacked and bitten in the leg by a shark.
Michael Adler, 16, who is an experienced surfer, wiped out on a wave. As he swam to get back onto his board, he felt a sudden surge of pain in his leg. A shark had bitten down on him and ripped through tendon, chomping down all the way to the bone.
Adler would later describe the harrowing ordeal as "Pretty cool."
Adler said he felt the shark's head shake once as it clamped onto his leg at the ankle. The shark eventually let go, and Adler says the pain was minimal, telling the New York Daily News, "It wasn't too painful at all. I think it was the adrenaline."
Adler also says his biggest fear was swimming back to shore.
"I thought it would smell the blood and follow me in again," he said.
Once on shore, the teen was met by a bystander who used Adler's surfboard leash as a tourniquet to quell the gushing of blood.
Paramedics were called in, and Adler took to Twitter to tweet out his experience, as any cool-ass teen surfer would:
That awkward moment when you get attacked by a shark #belly #humble twitter.com/mikeyadler1/st...
— Shark Bait (@mikeyadler1) May 4, 2013
Since the beach where he was surfing runs heavy with bull sharks, there's reason to believe Adler was attacked by that particular species.
Adler was taken to Health First Holmes Regional Medical Center, where doctors discovered four severed tendons. They also gave him 40 stitches to close the wound.
Adler's recovery is expected to take several weeks. But he is fully intending to get back out on the waves as soon as he gets the all-clear.
He figures, what are the odds of getting bit again?
"Not many people get bitten by a shark twice, so that's good," he said. "It lowers my chances."
Kid has balls. That, and he's good at math.
I better be on fucking shark week #bonz
— Shark Bait (@mikeyadler1) May 4, 2013
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