A 19-year-old girl was attacked by a shark last month while on vacation with her family in Galveston, Texas.
Damiana Humphrey and her siblings were waist-deep in the water when her sister-in-law said she saw something tan moving in the waves.
Humphrey said she turned around and ‘a shark grabbed ahold of my hand.’
‘I looked down and there was a shark attached to my hand, so I guess I started punching it. That part is kind of blurry to me,’ she recounted.
She said the shark, which was between four and five feet long, let go of her swam off as she ran out of the water with her siblings.
Her family, seeing the serious bite, immediately called 911 and first responders arrived to transport Damiana to hospital where she immediately underwent surgery on her hand.
The shark severed four tendons, and although she is expected to make a full recovery, she won’t be able to use her hand for several weeks, which means she’s had to give up her patient care technician role this summer.
Doctors have advised the teen that with physical therapy she will make a full recovery.
‘Honestly, I’m just glad it wasn’t as bad as it could have been,’ she said, adding that she is also relieved her siblings were not bitten.
The area’s Beach Patrol Chief, Peter Davis, told Fox26 Houston that despite Humphrey’s frightening experience, ‘it’s really rare for us to have shark bites here in Galveston.’
‘I’ve worked a few of them in my career and the ones I’ve seen were shark bites, not attacks. Meaning it was a case of mistaken identity where they latched onto a human and swam away it sounds like this may have been similar to that,’ he said.
Despite shark attacks being rare, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a significant number of sharks off the coast of Texas.
Sportfish Center scientist at Texas A&M University, Dr. Kesley Banks, said there are a handful of shark species in the West Bay region that exist in numbers.
‘Especially off Texas, the most common species are black tips, spinner sharks, bull sharks. Around the summer we see hammerheads and tiger sharks. They’re always there,’ she said.
Black tip and spinner sharks sometimes take on a tan-ish color, making it likely that it was one of those two types that bit Damiana.
Banks said that shark encounter numbers tend to rise in the summer because of the increased number of people in the water.
Experts advise that in order to prevent a shark attack, people can employ a few tips, which include: shuffling your feet when walking in the ocean, and avoiding intersections between the ocean and other bodies of water – like rivers, because there are usually lots of fish upon which sharks prey in those areas.
People should also avoid swimming around or near a school of fish, going into the water if bleeding, and if a shark does bite you, fight it off.
Humphrey did the exact right thing when she punched her attacker. Landing a fist on a shark’s nose or gills may prompt it to detach.