WARNING – GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS: Paul de Gelder had always feared being attacked by a shark until one day it happened for real while testing new Navy equipment in Sydney
A former Australian Navy diver was carrying out a routine training exercise when his life was left suddenly hanging by a thread after a shark struck from nowhere.
Paul de Gelder’s astonishing survival came down to his military calmness and refusal to be dragged down to his death by the predator in Sydney Harbour, Australia.
The Melbourne native likened the agony of the attack to having two rows of 36 razor blades on each side of his leg and wrist, tearing through his flesh.
Although he lived to tell the tale, Paul lost a hand and a leg in the savage eight-second bull shark attack in February 2009. He recalled: “The shark grabbed me by my right hand and the back of my right leg in the same bite.”
The bull shark – the third most deadly shark in the world – then pulled him underwater and began to thrash him about. “I tried to fight it off, but it had my hand, so I couldn’t do anything with it,” he said.
As a schoolboy, he’d been taught to hit a shark in the eye if he was ever attacked.
He said: “My left hand couldn’t reach the shark’s eye, and when I tried to punch it in the nose, it started shaking me. The pain was just so all-encompassing that the fight just went out of me.
“I was a rag doll in this monster’s mouth while getting thrashed around underwater. I was in total agony and drowning at the same time.”
Paul, 31 at the time, attempted to jab the killer in the eye as well as punching and pushing it – anything to stop it from devouring him like easy prey.
“From going to jab him in the eyeball with my hand, to working out that my hand was in his mouth as well, to trying to go for the eyeball with my other hand, pushing it, punching it, then going under water, coming up, and going back down,” he said.
After what felt like an eternity, the diver was finally free and able to swim towards his safety boat. Thankfully, he remembered his medical training and did what he could to slow the bleeding from his hand by holding it high.
He said: “At that point, I had no clue that my whole hamstring was gone and that I had an arterial bleed from my leg.” A doctor later told him that his life had been saved by one of the Navy team, who stemmed the blood flow by pinching closed the artery in his leg.
“I popped to the surface. That’s when I realised I had survived this nightmare encounter. I started to swim back to my safety boat, and I took a stroke with my right arm, only to realise my hand wasn’t there. My arm ended at the end of my wetsuit,” he said.
Paul admitted that prior to the incident, while working as a diver defusing underwater explosives, he lived in constant dread of encountering a shark. Yet after the attack, his terror has vanished completely.
He explained: “I was petrified of them before, and now for some reason, I’m just not. I don’t know. Been there, done that.” Paul, who now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, spent nine weeks in hospital and remarkably returned to military training just six months later.
Since 2012, he has worked as an inspirational speaker championing the creatures’ vital ecological importance. “Before the shark attack, I thought killing sharks was a great idea, but now I love them, and I don’t get to swim with them as much as I would like to,” he said.
