‘I thought I kicked a rock’: Surfer describes moment he was bitten by shark

By Sooji Nam

Click here for updates on this story

    HOBE SOUND, Florida (WPBF) — Bert Krebs has been surfing for more than 30 years, he said thinking about the possibility of being bitten by a shark in his life kept him calm when it actually happened this year.

He was enjoying his time with his friends at Nathaniel Reed Wildlife Refuge Beach in Hobe Sound, when the waves knocked him off his board.

“I was getting back on my board, and my arms were over the board. And I think I was kicking to get back up on the board,” Krebs said. “I thought I kicked a rock, or something, and all of a sudden, there was the bite. And then two seconds later, it was done.”

“I knew right away when it happened, I knew it was a bite. I yelled, ‘shark bite’ to my friends, and Dave said, ‘what?’ and I said, ‘shark bite!'”

Krebs was about 100 yards away from shore and swam as fast as he could without looking back.

“I didn’t want to look at it,” he said.

He remembers an off-duty firefighter was also at the beach, who soon rushed to help him.

“I passed out apparently in the ambulance, I think my blood pressure dropped,” Krebs said. “It wasn’t really painful until I got in the ambulance.”

He was then rushed to St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach where Dr. Faris Azar, a trauma surgeon, jumped in.

“The shark basically took a bite of the entire foot, it seems like slowly released and ultimately took the slow toe off of the end,” Azar said.

Medical experts said they have about five to 10 shark bite cases a year that they tend to at St. Mary’s.

“He was probably bit by about a four-foot black tip shark. Had it been a bull shark or something like that he probably wouldn’t have a foot,” he said. “Control blood loss, bleeding is ultimately the biggest problem when it comes to mortality. You need to survive the shark’s teeth to be able to deal with the aftereffects. The aftereffects we’re most concerned about is infection.”

Azar said research at St. Mary’s Medical Center over the last decade helped them focus on the most effective antibiotics to help shark bite victims.

hammerhead shark11-foot hammerhead shark washes up on South Florida beach As for Krebs, it’s going to take a couple of months for him to get back out on the waters. He says he looks forward to that day.

“I am grateful to be here, and the results had things been slightly different, maybe I wouldn’t be here,” he said.

“You absolutely should not worry about getting bit by a shark. But, avoid situations where it’s more likely to happen,” Jim Abernathy, a shark conservationist, said. “If there’s bait fish in the water, don’t go in the water. Because there’s definitely predators that are trying to eat that bait fish, which is very difficult for sharks. They lunge at huge bait not knowing what they’re going to actually get.”

“Avoid the misconceptions that are posted at places like fishing piers. They’re big signs up there saying no shark fishing. So, the shark signs mean absolutely nothing, and they catch sharks there all the time,” he said.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.