Photographer Catches Moment Shark Took a Bite Out of Teen

Former surfer was shooting from the beach and caught whole incident on video
By Liz MacGahan,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 18, 2021 12:45 PM CDT
Photographer Catches Moment Shark Took a Bite Out of Teen
Stock image of a black tip shark.   (Getty Images/pkphotoscom)

Conditions were perfect for surfing at New Smyrna Beach in Florida, thanks to big waves from Hurricane Larry. Conditions were perfect for hungry sharks, too, however—thanks to mullet and other fish hanging out at the sandbars where waves were breaking, per CNN. Venturing into this perfect storm was 16-year-old surfer Doyle Nielsen, whose mom, Lizzy Nielsen, had brought him and his brother down from Georgia to enjoy the surfing. Doyle was surfing when a black tip shark swam up and took a bite. "It felt like someone on their surfboard had come full speed directly at me and hit me super hard . " And then after somebody had yelled, 'There's a shark, get out of there,' I realized what it was , " he told Good Morning America.

Sam Scribner was drawn to the conditions, too. Scribner is a former surfer, but now uses a wheelchair after a spinal cord injury in 2016, and is now a photographer. He was on the beach taking photos and video of surfers and managed to catch the whole thing. He shared the video on Instagram in hopes that it would find its way to Doyle. Lizzy was watching Doyle’s brother Logan and missed the split-second attack. When Doyle told her he’d been bit, she initially thought he was joking. "He was just standing there, fine," she told CNN. Doyle didn’t know there was video of the encounter until he was back home in Georgia, where he’s a junior in high school—a high school where the other kids were skeptical that his injury really was from a shark attack. Now he has the video to prove it. (More shark attack stories.)

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