Joe Hoffman shark bite: Popular surfer ‘glad it was him’ bitten at Crescent Head
Joe Hoffman is glad it was him bitten by a 3m great white shark and not a young grom, as his long road ahead becomes clearer.
Coffs Harbour
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Laying in the trauma unit at John Hunter Hospital as a team of surgeons work relentlessly to save his arm, having first saved his life, it would be easy for Joe Hoffman to lament his situation.
But that’s not his style.
Ten days after he was bitten by a 3m great white shark while surfing at Crescent Head on July 5, there’s still no certainty that he will keep his right arm.
But there’s one thing he is certain of.
“I’m glad it was me and not one of the young kids out there,” were the words his father, Bill, recalled his son saying, during what had been a blur of nearly 30 hours of surgeries in the past week.
Mr Hoffman, a former Sunshine Coast Daily journalist, his wife Wendy and their beloved son Joe, 25, aren’t the type to sugar-coat things.
There’s unlikely to be any miraculous recovery.
Only a very long and difficult path, with surgeons expecting he would at best regain limited use of his right arm.
“Everything was destroyed,” Mr Hoffman said.
Tendons, ligaments, arteries and nerves were severed.
Joe’s forearm was also shattered by the bite, which stretched from near his wrist up to his right bicep.
“His body as he knew it won’t return,” Mr Hoffman said.
But the Mudjimba family was hopeful their son would recover and go on to live a full life, despite the traumatic injuries.
If he does, that would in large be due to the efforts of the John Hunter Hospital surgical trauma team.
Nerves had been transplanted from Joe’s leg to his arm, a vein taken from his foot and a piece of artery replaced, just a few of what were a series of “delicate, complicated, time-consuming” surgeries.
The surgical team had been working on relay and Joe’s circulation was being monitored around the clock, as every effort was made to save the popular young man’s arm.
“Rehab is going to be lengthy and it’s going to ask a lot of questions of him,” Mr Hoffman said.
“He’s got a big challenge in front of him.
“They’ve borrowed bits from all over his body (to repair his arm).”
Some will call it unlucky, such are the odds of being bitten by a shark.
But the odds of having a team of off-duty trauma specialists holidaying at the same beach, at 4.30pm on a Monday in winter, as well as paramedics and first aid-trained bystanders, who all pitched in to help save Joe’s life on the sand, are almost impossible.
Mr Hoffman said he wasn’t sure if it was karma, serendipity, or a combination of both, that landed his son in the hands of those people.
“Joe gives out enormous positive energy,” he said of the impact his son had on so many lives.
“I don’t know if that was karma paying that back or whatever it was.
“It was serendipitous.”
Mr Hoffman reeled off a long list of names of people the family wished to thank.
Among those was 42-year-old schoolteacher Glenn Hood.
The father of two from Mansfield, Victoria, was fishing on that fateful Monday afternoon when he saw Joe about 15m off the beach.
About to cast, Mr Hood thought better of it, looked at Joe, then asked if he was all right.
He said Joe just shook his head and held up his severely damaged arm.
Another surfer was coming in behind to help, so Mr Hood took off up the beach to his wife Kate, to get her to ring an ambulance.
Having recently undergone wilderness first aid training, Mr Hood said he was in no doubt a tourniquet was needed.
Mr Hood and the other surfer helped get Joe out of the surf zone before laying him on his surfboard, which had a 2ft bite mark taken out of it.
A leg rope was removed and Mr Hood’s instincts kicked in, as he wrapped the rope as tightly as he could around Joe’s arm.
“It definitely wasn’t a perfect tourniquet,” Mr Hood said.
“He was obviously in shock but still conscious the whole time.”
Mr Hood said he feared he may have held the tourniquet too tightly, as he desperately applied pressure.
“I just didn’t want him to bleed to death,” Mr Hood said.
“I just held this tourniquet the whole time.
“It’s the most full-on injury I’ve ever seen.”
Mr Hood praised the surfer who followed Joe in and said an off-duty paramedic, as well as trauma specialist and anaesthetist had all taken charge of the scene quickly.
He said Joe had remained, despite the chaos, calm and conscious throughout.
“He was like ‘thanks guys, thanks, you guys are great’,” Mr Hood recalled.
“He was obviously in shock but still very polite.”
Mr Hood said he’d been puzzled by how Joe’s right arm had been bitten, but the bite mark was missing from the left side of his surfboard.
Mr and Mrs Hoffman visited Crescent Head on their way back down to Joe’s bedside after a whirlwind trip back to the Sunshine Coast to pick up supplies, to gain a visual understanding of what had happened.
“We were pleased that we did it,” Mr Hoffman said.
“He’s suffered a major injury after an encounter with a large marine animal. There’ll be no quick recovery.”
But Mr Hoffman said they were confident their son would come out of it “really well” and live a complete life.
“He owes that much to the people who have worked so hard to save that life and he’s aware of that,” Mr Hoffman said.
Mr Hoffman said they would not get ahead of themselves, but were hopeful, if circulation issues were settled, that it may be the last of the surgeries and the focus could now shift to recovery.
In what he said would be the only interview he gave until his son was in a position to speak for himself, Mr Hoffman said the family wished to make clear it harboured no ill will.
“There is absolutely no shark hate in our family, Joe accepts that surfers enter their environment,” he said.
“We’re always aware of their presence and the risk of injury is slight. He was brought up in the surf 400m from our family home.
“People who don’t want to surf with sharks should go to a wave pool.”
He reiterated his family’s gratitude for the widespread support and well-wishes flowing for Joe, including a GoFundMe page which had raised almost $60,000 towards his recovery.
Mr Hoffman also thanked Joe’s mate, Kahu Andronicus, an off-duty paramedic named Emma, a chiropractor named Ian from Newcastle and Jacques Grimaux, who all helped on the scene, as well as Dr Cino Bendinelli, Louise and Steve Devine, their Hunter Region hosts Bob and Terri, Joe’s girlfriend Louisa Andersen and his friends Billy Hatton and Zac Vale, as well as the Kempsey Police.
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Originally published as Joe Hoffman shark bite: Popular surfer ‘glad it was him’ bitten at Crescent Head
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