Photo: Kaimani Ventura // Instagram
A Hawaii spearfisherman has shared the gruesome story of how he survived a shark attack. Kaimani Ventura, 24, had a horrific encounter with a shark while diving off the Big Island, as he recounts in an Instagram video describing the ordeal in detail.
Ventura and a few friends were on a spearfishing excursion on December 9 when the bite occurred. By all accounts, it was an idyllic day – filming, hanging out with friends and catching fish. But things all took a turn when they encountered a shark that was stuck in a tangle of nets.
“As I was coming up from the bottom, I look over and I see this shark, a blacktip,” describes Ventura. “It had a bunch of nets on it, you could tell he’d been there a long time. I see my good friend Chris behind it with just his knife in hand. Instantly, I’m like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna help this shark.’”
As the animal calmly swam towards him, Kaimani reached out and took the net in his hand. In response, the shark went limp and stopped swimming, so he pulled it in a little closer. However, when his friend approached to cut the net, the shark was spooked.
As Ventura describes it, the scene went from calm to instant pandemonium. The shark jerked away from him, then actually jumped out of the water, before landing directly on top of him. “It fucking just drops on me, right on my legs,” continues Ventura. “Then I try to start kicking, maybe two or three kicks. Then, right there, I just feel right on my leg. Chomp”
He emerged from the frothing water to yell to his friends that he’d been bitten, then dropped his gun and knife and made a beeline for shore.
“I started swimming through and I get through the first set,” he goes on. “Mind you, I’m kicking with both legs. I don’t really know the damage. I’m like, ‘Maybe it’s not that bad. It’s not that bad.’ I’m kicking, kicking, and then the second wave hits me. I look back and I just see blood and flesh and fat and stuff. I should have blacked out right there, just seeing that, let alone from my own body. But I just turned my head, took a deep breath. I said, ‘Just keep going. Don’t look back.’”
Meanwhile, his diving companions were nowhere to be found. In the chaos and the confusion, it was unclear whether they even knew he was hurt. Ventura didn’t know at the time that they were on the way to help, but from his perspective, he was on shore with no help in sight.
Photo: Kaimani Ventura // Instagram
“I looked back and I didn’t see them,” he recalls. “I was just like, ‘Okay, it’s up to me, I’m my only helper now.’ So I was like, ‘Chance em.’”
After running up the beach to the car, he ripped through the seam of his suit to get at the leg and applied a makeshift tourniquet from a cord he had luckily left nearby. Soon after, his friends arrived from the water to lend aid. Ventura then thought to go grab his phone, but rather than call for an ambulance, immediately dialed his mother.
“I say, ‘Hi guys, don’t freak out. I just got bit by shark.’ Instantly they freak out. I’m just like, ‘Oh no, not right now,’ and hang up on them,” continues Ventura. “So then I waited like three seconds, and I called them back.”
Someone else would end up calling 911. Ventura and his friends applied another tourniquet and started the long journey back to the road, where an ambulance would be waiting. On the way, he called his mother again and took a few bong rips for good measure.
“I don’t know what to do, so I rip a couple,” he says. “We started rambling, just ripping. It was like 45 minutes to an hour to get down there on a soft road, taking it easy. Finally we get to the ambulance. I jump out the car, hide the bag, and they pull me on the stretcher.”
From there he was transported by ambulance, then chopper, to a nearby hospital for emergency surgery. “Beyond grateful for the medical people,” says Ventura. “The staff, the nurses, the surgeon, everyone the paramedics, EMT, the chopper pilot, everyone who was involved with making sure I got to the hospital, making sure I got home, making sure I got the least amount of injuries possible. I’m just beyond grateful.”
Even after all that, he says he wouldn’t have done it any different, though. “I always help out an animal in need,” he explains. “You know, I take from this ocean, so it’s only right that I give back. I try to, at least. I don’t see anything wrong. I don’t regret getting bit. I have the sickest scar, so that’s cool. And my leg can work.
“Definitely opens your eyes to what can happen and stuff like that, but I’m very thankful. I’m excited to be back in the water. (If) you think that something like this would stop me, then you’re surely mistaken.”
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