A 40-year-old man was attacked by a great white shark off the coast of Manhattan Beach in Los Angeles on Saturday.
Steven Robles was swimming with a group of distance swimmers at around 9:30 a.m. when he was bitten by a 7-foot shark that had just spent 30 to 40 minutes fighting to free itself from a fisherman’s line.
The terrifying incident was captured on a cell phone video, with onlookers initially laughing at the swimmers frantically trying to swim to shore before realizing that someone had been attacked. Witness Aram Ozen said he was surfing near the pier when he heard screams of “white, white!”
“It was a scary scream,” Ozen told the Los Angeles Times over the weekend. “It was kind of freaky. There was a lot people screaming back to shore.”
One witness told the Times that the fisherman had been throwing chum into the water to attract sharks. The fisherman, who chose not to be named, told KTLA that there was no chumming, noting that he did what fishermen are instructed to do by cutting his line after identifying the catch as a great white.
Robles was bit in the midsection but has fortunately already been released from the hospital. However, he told CNN he has been waking up with nightmares since the incident and is not ready to get back in the water anytime soon.
“I hope I do someday, but it’s off the table right now,” Robles, who swims two miles each Saturday, explained.
Unlike that video we showed you with the man allegedly coming face-to-face with a great white in Australia, there is no question about whether this incident actually happened. Robles will have the scar to prove it.
Full video with NSFW language below:
