Geoff Johnson, bleeding profusely after winning a mini-Darwin award
Note to Fear Beneath readers: being attacked by a shark that you caught in your own boat does not make you eligible for our “Free Shark Camo for Confirmed Shark Attack Victims” compensation. As far as we’re concerned, the score is Sharks: 1, Geoff Johnson: 0.
First, the fisherman hooked the shark. Then the shark hooked the fisherman.
In a bizarre case of a shark striking back at the man who caught it, fisherman Geoff Johnson lost two liters of blood in a battle with the 6 foot reef shark on board his boat.
Geoff, 50, and his partner Jacky Lamb were fishing a few miles from Darwin, in Australia’s Northern Territory, when he hooked the shark. As he reeled it in, he tried to grab it by the tail so he could free the hook from its mouth, but the shark was having none of it.
In a desperate struggle to get away, it bit Mr Johnson on his right knee – and then, to add to the fisherman’s agony, the point of the hook that was protruding from the side of the shark’s mouth stabbed him in the leg.
“As the shark thrashed around it just tore my leg open, because the hook was still in there,” he said. “The hook did more damage than the shark,” he told the Northern Territory News.
The reef shark in question that allegedly attacked Geoff in the safety of his own boat!
The 50-year-old needed 30 stitches in his right leg after his battle with the shark
“There was blood going everywhere… I had to lay down and Jacky had to drive the boat back in.” Jacky was shocked at the amount of blood Geoff had lost. “It looked like somebody had been murdered,” she said.
It was 45 minutes before the boat arrived back at the shore, where Geoff hobbled up a boat ramp with a blood-soaked towel around his leg while Jacky ran for help.
Bystanders drove Geoff to the Royal Darwin Hospital where he received 30 stitches in the wound. He has promised to buy a round of beers for those who came to help him.
As for the shark – Geoff will get his revenge when, trimmed and dressed, it ends up on his barbecue.
Reef sharks are regarded as “harmless” to humans unless provoked.
(In which case, apparently, they will shred you just like any other shark! -MB)