Henry Gibbs says he harbors no hard feelings toward the shark that recently attacked him off the coast of Fiji, even though it nearly cost him his leg. Gibbs was diving and spearfishing when a grey reef shark zeroed in on him. It raced up toward him at the surface and grabbed his leg, causing a lot of damage before letting him go. Gibbs survived the shark attack, but he had to undergo four surgeries and a skin graft. He caught the whole attack on video.
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“We’d been diving the reef for an hour or two before moving off into the clearer blue water to try and pursue something a bit bigger while spearfishing,” explains Gibbs in his post sharing part of the footage. “We’d missed a few shots on other fish, and there were a handful of grey reef sharks around, with this one hanging around us longer than the others.”
Gibbs says it’s possible that commotion from the boat and/or the spearguns aggravated the shark that ended up attacking him. He says he knew what was about to happen as he saw the animal coming for him. However, he recognizes that he was in the shark’s neighborhood, and he says he doesn’t hold it against the animal.
“No hard feelings towards the shark,” he wrote in a post sharing a post-surgery update. “I was in its environment hunting its food. Wrong place, wrong time.”
Watch partial footage of the diver’s shark attack below, or see it here (no gore).
Header stock image by imageBROKER/Frank Schneider/Getty Images
