Whitsunday shark attack victim Todd Price recounts his escape
WARNING GRAPHIC: The victim of a vicious shark attack in the Whitsundays has admitted he felt ‘it come up and grab onto my leg’ after the beast savagely ripped chunks of his body. See the exclusive photos.
Mackay
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What began as the perfect weekend on a boat turned in an instant when a Middlemount miner took a dip in the beautiful Whitsunday waters.
Father-of-two Todd Price left Airlie Beach on Friday morning with friends, heading to a tranquil bay near Hook Island.
It was the Middlemount miner’s third trip to the tropical paradise, and first time on Whitsunday waters.
What later unfolded was an attack so quick and quiet that no one on board was immediately aware anything had gone wrong.
The crew had anchored at Hook Passage near Saba Bay and spent the day drinking a few beers, swimming to the nearby beach before enjoying the on-board hot tub in the evening.
“I was getting a bit hot, so I thought I’d dive in (the ocean) and cool off, not going for a swim, just to freshen up,” Mr Price said.
“As soon as I’d popped my head up from the dive, I felt something pushing on my leg.
“I put my hand down and felt a big head and I thought ‘oh this isn’t good’.”
The 34 year old said the head felt soft and slimy — and he knew exactly what it was.
He managed to push the shark away the first time and made for the ladder.
“I felt it come up and grab onto my leg — but not hard, not as hard as you’d think it would,” he said.
“So I pushed it again, and it must have let go and then as I was pulling myself up the ladder, it grabbed the bottom of my leg.”
Mr Price managed to pull himself back into the boat where he could assess the damage.
As soon as his mates realised what had happened, Mr Price said they quickly sprang into action, applying their advanced first aid skills.
“It didn’t seem to be bleeding that much, but it did squirt out when they pulled it back,” Mr Price said.
“They laid me down, ripped off their shirts, wrapped them up, taped my leg up and straight away over to Hammo.”
A doctor treated him on Hamilton Island while waiting for a RACQ CQ Rescue helicopter to take him to Mackay Base Hospital.
He went into surgery at 10.30pm Friday, coming out several hours later with 60 stitches on his left leg.
Mr Price said the pain of the bites themselves “wasn’t that bad” — comparing the pressure of the shark’s bite to his family cat.
“We’ve got two cats, when they’re hungry, they’ll come up and nibble on the back of your legs, and that’s what it was like,” he said.
“It was just nibbling on the back of my leg.”
When Mr Price’s wife Gillian received the call on Friday night, she assumed it was just a bucks party prank.
“I thought they were kidding, I told them ‘stop it, I’m not going to fall for this’ and I just laughed the whole conversation.”
But she said it only really hit home when she saw him being wheeled out from surgery.
Initially, though, it was not the shark-bitten leg that shocked her most.
During the trip, Mr Price had shaved his hair into a mullet.
“I said ‘what have you done!’, because first it was the hair and the face,” she said.
“But then it was ‘oh my god, your knee, your leg’”.
Mr Price is expected to be discharged this afternoon and will head home to his family in Middlemount.
He was in good spirits at the Mackay hospital, with a dolphin balloon next to him that his wife had drawn shark teeth on.
Despite his narrow escape from death, he said it would not stop him from getting back in the water and hoped it would not deter others either.
“It’s not something I’m going to worry about, I might think about it a bit more — but I still love the ocean,” Mr Price said.
“I do feel lucky though, it could have been a lot worse.
“And I feel so lucky it was so close to such helpful people who got me straight to where I needed to be.”
Mr Price said he wanted to thank all the medical staff who had “helped from the get go”.
“The [hospital] staff have been amazing, explaining everything to me, they’ve been great,” he said.
“The doctors, surgery, great. And the RACQ CQ helicopter guys, I’d lost without them.”
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