The angler who had his leg bitten by a blue shark off the Waterford coast this week said he feared for his life.
As The Irish Times reports, Sebastian Achim (27) was fishing with four others some 6.5km from Ram Head, Ardmore, Co Waterford on Tuesday.
A shark which was caught by Achim “some time earlier” lunged for him on the deck of the boat and bit his calf, causing significant injuries, the newspaper reports.
“We fished for a few hours. Everybody – the rest of the crew – caught their own shark. I finally managed to land my own, I got a 1.5m blue shark,” he said.
He said the crew was preparing to release his catch back into the water when it attacked him.
“I thought, ‘I’m not going to make it’. I was trying to stay strong to not scare the other crew,” he told The Irish Times, speaking from Cork University Hospital.
As Afloat has reported, he was airlifted to hospital by the Irish Coast Guard Rescue 117 helicopter in an operation involving Ballycotton RNLI and Youghal RNLI and Irish Coast Guard Helicopter Rescue 117.
Achim, originally from Romania, lives in Dungarvan, and said angling was his passion, but he does not intend to go fishing for blue shark again.
Dr Kevin Flannery told The Irish Examiner that blue sharks,which can grow up to 12 ft in length, are normally “of absolutely no danger to humans” as they stay away from beaches and coastlines.
He told the newspaper that the species is currently under threat from Spanish fishing fleets catching them in large numbers to sell their fins to the Chinese market.
Meanwhile, Irish wildife Trust has spoken out about the media coverage of shark bite incident.
Read The Irish Times HERE and The Examiner HERE
