Hanalei Bay was closed on Monday afternoon after a man surfing at the Bowl was bitten by what is believed to have been a tiger shark. The attack occurred at just before 2 p.m. Luckily for the victim, three teenagers were fishing nearby, and likely saved his life.
“He yelled help, and then we all knew at that moment that we had to go and help him,” Tommy Hamai, one of the rescuers, told Khon2 News. “So we pulled our lines out of the water and we raced over to him as fast as we pretty much could.”
When Hamai and his two friends Kea Dwight and Chas Weimar reached his location, it was clear what had happened. “We got to him, and we saw there was a lot of blood in the water and that he was losing a lot of blood,” Hamai continued. “He told us he got nipped by a shark.”
The victim, who is a firefighter, used surfboard leash as a tourniquet as the teenagers called paramedics and drove to shore. “People would have brought him in on their longboards but it wouldn’t have been brought in nearly as fast as we could have done it,” said Hamai.
Once the lifeguards had the victim in their care, Tommy turned around and drove back out to the lineup to ferry another surfer back to shore.
The victim was taken to a nearby hospital and was admitted in stable condition. According to reports, he has wounds to his knee and upper thigh and is expected to recover.
