4 days ago
Shocking new details emerge about shark attack on Sydney Harbour: 'It was eating me'
Sixteen years after a bull shark tore off his arm and leg in Sydney Harbour, former Navy diver Paul de Gelder is back in shark-infested waters, this time by choice.
In a new Discovery series, How To Survive a Shark Attack, de Gelder puts himself in high-risk situations to test survival tactics and educate viewers on how to stay alive during an encounter with one of the ocean's deadliest predators.
Viewers will experience real shark attacks up close through a series of never-before-attempted experiments that teach life-saving tactics for surviving an encounter.
One experiment shows de Gelder on an upturned kayak with hungry sharks circling underneath.
In another exeriment De Gelder straps on fake limbs oozing with blood, then feeds them to real sharks mouths.
'Paul, I just want to go on the record and say that I'm not comfortable with this,' a producer warned off-camera.
He insists filming the program wasn't retraumatising and sees himself as a survivor rather than a victim.
'I've lived a pretty tumultuous life, and I don't really look at the bad things that have happened to me as anchor points that I need to latch onto and spiral into depression or have PTSD or anything like that,' he said.
Sixteen years ago, on February 11, 2009, de Gelder was taking part in a counter-terrorism military exercise in Sydney Harbour near Woolloomooloo when a nine-foot-long bull shark attacked him without warning.
The assault lasted just eight seconds, but it cost him an arm and a leg.
'No one saw the shark coming. It was eating me before everyone knew what was even happening,' he told
'I grabbed it by the nose and I tried to lever it off me, but that did absolutely nothing.
'I tried to punch it off ... but it took me under and started tearing me apart.
He pounded the 300kg beast with everything he had as it pulled him under once more, convinced this time it was the end.
'I was drowning in agony, being eaten alive and I realised there was nothing I could do, so I gave up.'
Then, in a move he still can't explain, the shark suddenly let go, leaving de Gelder floating in the harbour.
Despite the catastrophic injuries, he managed to swim back to the safety boat through a pool of his own blood.
Onboard, his colleagues desperately tried to stop the bleeding using T-shirts.
'Then it was thanks to my chief on the wharf, knowing that it wasn't stopping the blood, so he got one of the guys to pinch an artery closed with their fingers,' de Gelder said.
'The surgeon said if he hadn't done that, I would have died within another 30 seconds.'
He recalls the surreal moment it all began: 'I was on the surface, on my back, kicking my legs when all of the sudden, I felt this pressure on my leg. I turned around and I came face to face with a massive shark's head.
'And then my survival instincts kicked in and I thought, 'I've got to get out of this somehow.'
'I thought, I've seen Shark Week - I'll jab it in the eyeball. The shark actually had my right hand and I couldn't move it.
In his Shark Week special, de Gelder shares his top tips for surviving a shark attack. Some are straightforward, like avoiding murky water or areas with fishing activity, but others might surprise you.
One big myth he busts: don't punch a shark in the nose.
'Now, if you're in the jaws of the shark? At that point, you want to do all you can. In that case, I would go for the eyeballs, go for the gills, just fight for your life,' he says.
'But generally speaking, if you see a shark and it does approach you, you do not want to punch it in the nose.'
There are two main reasons. First, a shark's head is made of thick cartilage, so punching it can hurt your hand, and bleeding in the water is a bad idea.
Second, sharks are faster and more agile underwater than you. That punch could miss or even land your hand in its mouth, making it an easy meal.
Now 47, de Gelder says he doesn't view himself as a victim, but a survivor, and he's dedicated his life to protecting sharks in the wild.
'I'm not retraumatised by any of this,' he insists.
Shark Week begins Sunday 10 August at 7:30pm on Discovery (Foxtel, Fetch, Binge) and HBO Max. How To Survive a Shark Attack premieres Tuesday 12 August at 7:30pm.
How to Survive a Shark Attack premieres Tuesday 12 August at 7.30pm.
