One moment I was swimming across Sydney Harbour, the next my right leg was caught in the jaws of a 9 foot bull shark.
As someone who grew up in Australia – which has an average of 20 shark attacks a year – this was the moment I had dreaded my entire life.
But my fighting instinct kicked in. As any schoolboy knows, when a shark attacks you, punch it in the eye. That was the only option I was denied as my right hand was pinned to my leg with its teeth.
And the bull shark has more teeth than any other species. They can grow up to an inch, but a bull has 50 rows of them, with seven teeth in each row, making 350 in all. And what they lack in size, they make up for in needle-like sharpness.
I tried to counterattack with my left hand. That’s when it started shaking me like a rag doll. Folklore may cite the great white as the most feared denizen of the deep, but nothing quite as frighteningly aggressive as a bull shark.
Paul de Gelder, motivational speaker, author and Navy Reserve, lost both an arm and a leg when he was attacked by a male bull shark during a counter-terrorism exercise on Sydney Harbor in February 2009
Paul de Gelder pictured with a shark. He said: “My first encounter with tiger sharks in the Bahamas was unforgettable. A few years later I got to teach Will Smith how to do it.
As his teeth sawed through my flesh and bone, I felt the most intense pain imaginable. The whole fight left me and I started choking on the damn water as the 700lb Behemoth started tripping me. Now I was really sure that I was going to die.
I’ll never know why it let me go. Maybe it had tasted enough of my flesh to know I wasn’t its usual meal. Whatever the reason, it released its grip and swooped down to find more familiar prey.
As I dove back to the surface, I realized that not only was there a thick layer of blood on the water, but more was pouring out of me every second. How long before more bull sharks were attracted to the smell of blood?
Luckily, as a member of the Royal Australian Navy’s Specialty Diving Unit, I was in Sydney Harbor taking part in a counter-terrorism exercise where I swam around the warships at Naval Base HMS Kuttabul. I had the presence of mind to keep my injured arm out of the water and over my heart to stop the bleeding as I walked to the safety boat.
I saw the look of horror on my teammates’ faces as they dragged me in, so I did what soldiers do and cracked a joke. Then I closed my eyes and prepared to bleed to death.
I owe my survival to the bravery and quick wits of one of the guys, who put his hand down my leg and held my severed artery shut with his fingers until I could be handed over to the battalion of doctors, nurses, service personnel and blood donors who arrived teamed up to save my life. A few surgeries later, I woke up to find that I was missing half an arm and a leg.
Since that day in February 2009, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on what happened and why I had become the target of every swimmer’s nightmare.
Paul de Gelder lost his right arm and leg after being attacked by a 9ft bull shark on Sydney Harbor in February 2009
Mr de Gelder says the gruesome shark attack encouraged him to speak up on behalf of the predators
One reason may have been that I was lying on my back in the water and using rubber fins on my feet to get around.
Slapping a fin against water creates the kind of low-frequency sound waves that sharks are attuned to, and that’s probably what drew the bull to me. As it was early morning and cloudy and the water was muddy brown, the bull shark could not have seen my silhouette clearly and concluded that I was not among its usual food sources such as fish, dolphin or even another shark.
Instead, it had decided unequivocally that there was only one way to find out what was causing that surface splash: bite into it.
There is no doubt that I was unlucky. Far more people drown in their own bathtub than are attacked by sharks, but that didn’t stop me from being scared of them as a kid. As a young boy growing up in Australia, I spent a lot of time in the water, but movies like Jaws scared me so much of sharks that I even had to think about them in swimming pools.
Still, I went spearfishing with my grandfather and big wave boogie boarding with my brother. I knew there were sharks out there, but there were some things that worried me more than being eaten alive — like impressing my dad.
I didn’t so much conquer my terror as push it aside. My fear of sharks remained even after I joined the Australian Army and became a paratrooper.
Then why did I ask to be transferred to the Navy to become a diver? And not just any diver, but a clearance specialist in an elite unit, performing missions from salvage to destruction.
I suppose it was because as a kid I was always in the pool or the sea and missed it after a break from the water in the army.
Mr de Gelder, a former Navy Clearance Diver, is pictured conducting a routine military drill in hospital after his lower right arm and right leg were ripped off by the apex predator.
Mr de Gelder is pictured up close and personal with a shark. He is now a motivational speaker, attending Shark Week each year to raise awareness of how important they are to the ecosystem
I had never seen any of the creatures of my nightmares. Sharks might have been on my mind every time I got in the water, but I never seemed to be on their mind. Until that fateful day.
After my recovery, I refused to let my injuries keep me from doing what I loved and I went back to sea and even back to Sydney Harbour. While I was definitely still scared of sharks, retiring from my job in the Navy scared me more.
I passed every test they presented me and re-qualified as a clearance diver, but it became clear that the Navy would never allow me to rejoin my dive team or engage in combat operations.
For the first time in a long time I began to doubt what my future would hold. Who would have thought that it would be this bull shark that would lead me to a new career path?
As part of my recovery, I started reading more about sharks. I wanted to understand more about the creature that had changed my life, and the more I learned, the more I realized how much we – as humans – are changing their lives.
My story has been followed by the Australian media and I have received requests to speak to companies and teams on overcoming adversity. I also got the chance to work with sharks for TV documentaries.
I’m still here and haven’t lost a limb since the Sydney Harbor attack.
I wish I could say that the sharks are doing as well as I am. But after taking so long to evolve—the earliest fossil evidence dates it back 450 million years—humanity is killing them off at a rate that will result in many, if not most, species becoming extinct in the coming decades.
I strongly believe that humans should use the ocean, but do so at your own peril. I think the idea that we should kill creatures to make the sea safer for us is the epitome of selfishness.
I don’t want you to stay out of the water. But if the choice is to kill sharks or surf more in a particular hotspot, then I will spare the sharks’ lives every time.
Shark attacks are rare and we must view them as accidents rather than murders. With the exception of shipwreck survivors, almost all shark attack victims are in the water because the sea is a magical place that they love. Sharks are part of that magic and we must always remember that we are guests in their home.
- Excerpt from Shark: Why We Need To Save The World’s Most Misunderstood Predator by Paul de Gelder published by Mudlark for £16.99. © 2022 Paul de Gelder. To order a copy for £15.69 visit mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. UK delivery is free on orders over £20.