Small Nurse Shark Latching Onto Swimmer’s Stomach

**kellyhound** · #1 ● 09-29-2017, 02:30 AM

Video shows a small nurse shark latched onto the stomach of a terrified Ervin Maccarty, who went swimming off the coast of Marathon, Fla.

“Don’t cut me! Don’t bleed him out on me!” Maccarty yells after climbing onto a boat as a friend — who appears to need a bigger knife — slices away at the shark.

“He didn’t get your penis, did he?” another chum says, trying to inject some gallows humor as Maccarty writhes in pain and blood spurts everywhere.

His friends finally managed to remove the shark’s teeth from his belly.

Maccarty said he had been eating lunch on the boat while his friends searched for lobsters in the water.

“One of them came up for air and says he shot a grouper with a spear gun and that the grouper was stuck in the hole,” Maccarty said, the Daily Mirror reported.

“I am good at getting groupers out of holes, so the captain of the boat asked me to go in and get the grouper.”

He said he jumped in and dove to the hole 10 feet down.

“As soon as I get down there, the shark came out of another hole and bit me. I struggled getting back to the boat. It knocked the breath out of me, so I had to get up for air, but I felt the shark biting and trying to tear me open,” he said.

“It wouldn’t let go, so I had to hold it tight with both hands so it wouldn’t rip me open and I had to get up for air with the shark pulling me down,” he continued.

“I thought I would drown. I got up and saw the boat had floated away and everyone yelling that the shark had bit me,” he said. “No one knew it was still on me. I had to get to the boat with no hands to swim with. It was a struggle and wore me out.”