A young Cape Town lifeguard had his foot bitten off by a shark during a lifesaving training exercise at Sunrise Beach on Sunday as he battled to fight off what is believed to be a Great White.
Achmat Hassiem, 24, of Strandfontein, was airlifted to hospital on Sunday morning where he underwent emergency surgery. He is in a stable condition.
The beaches in the area were closed after the attack, and a white flag bearing the image of a black shark was draped from the window of False Bay Lifesaving clubhouse, a warning that sharks were present.
While shark specialists appealed for calm on Sunday, asking that the incident be referred to as a "shark encounter", not an attack, his younger brother, Taariq, 17, who was in the water with Achmat, described it as an attack, saying that the shark had returned to ram their boat.
Continues Below ↓
'I saw Achmat trying to wrestle with it' His is a tale of two brothers, both trained lifeguards from False Bay Lifesaving and both passionate about the sea, who both took action during the attack to save each other.
Taariq, a matric pupil at Bergvliet High, and Achmat, a correspondence marketing student, were behind the breakers, about 200m offshore from Sunrise Beach, Muizenberg, about 10.45am, when the incident occurred. The water was clear and about 2m to 3m deep.
"We were in the water and meant to be the patients that had to be rescued in the training exercise. Another lifeguard, Nic Pemberton, was meant to be the unconscious patient, I was the patient that couldn't swim and Achmat was the one who was meant to be conscious and could swim," Taariq said.
"So obviously the boat had to go to pick up Nic first. Then, as they were coming for me, Achmat suddenly shouted: 'Taariq! Shark!' I was near the boat and jumped in as fast as I could and then I turned and saw the shark going for my brother.
'The shark came back and rammed the boat'
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
