Joseph Tanner, getting packaged up for the emergency room following the attack. Photo: KOIN
A surfer was bitten by a shark on his lower leg and upper thigh yesterday at Indian Beach, in Oregon’s Ecola State Park. Joseph Tanner, 29, a Portland resident, suffered no major damage to his arteries and is expected to keep his leg. But Tanner, a nurse, helped his rescuers out by explaining how to tie a tourniquet on his leg, giving them his blood type and other information.
“He was directing them, telling them how to fix him and they were putting a tourniquet on him with the leash,” said Jeffrey Rose, a bystander. “He directed his own first aid, what needed to be done,” Rose said. “He asked us a lot of questions: what we were seeing, if we saw spurting blood.”
Steve Gehrig, who was in the lineup next to Tanner at the time of the attack told local reporters, “He kind of just lurched real funny – it looked like he had slipped off his board but a little more violently than you would see someone slip and I was like, did he just slip or was that something different?”
One surfer told reporters he saw a “large” dorsal fin. Though the species isn’t known, great white sharks inhabit the waters off the Oregon coast. The last attack occurred three years ago, off Gleneden Beach. There have been 20 attacks off the Oregon coast during the past 25 years, according to the Global Shark Attack File database — all of them involving surfers who survived.
After being stabilized, Tanner was flown to a hospital in Portland for further treatment.
Rescuers used Tanner’s leash to tie the tourniquet. “He handled this so well, and I know he was in a lot of pain,” Rose said.
