A 19-year-old girl was attacked by a shark last month while on vacation with her family in Galveston, Texas.
Damiana Humphrey and her siblings were waist-deep in water when her sister-in-law said she saw something tan moving in the waves.
According to Humphrey, she turned around and “a shark grabbed my hand.”
“I looked down and there was a shark attached to my hand, so I guess I started hitting it. That part is a little blurry to me,” he said.
She said the shark, which was about four or five feet long, then broke free and swam away while she ran out of the water with her siblings.
Damiana Humphrey, 19, is escorted out of the ocean after a shark bites her hand. The bloody wound is visible when her family calls emergency services.
His family saw the serious bite and understood the urgency of the situation. They called 911 and first responders arrived to transport Damiana to the hospital, where she immediately underwent hand surgery.
The shark severed four tendons and, although she is expected to make a full recovery, she will not be able to use her hand for several weeks, meaning she had to resign from her position as a patient care technician this summer.
Doctors have advised the teenager that “with physical therapy” she will make a full recovery.
“Honestly, I’m glad it wasn’t as bad as it could have been,” she said, adding that she’s also relieved her siblings weren’t bitten.
The head of the area’s Beach Patrol, Peter Davis, said Fox26 Houston that despite Humphrey’s disturbing experience, “it’s really rare that we get shark bites here in Galveston.”
‘I have worked with some of them throughout my career and the ones I have seen were shark bites, not attacks. “Which means it was a case of mistaken identity where they latched onto a human and swam away, it seems like this may have been similar to that,” he said.
The outlet reports that the general lack of shark bite victims does not mean there are not a significant number of sharks off the Texas coast.
Dr. Kesley Banks, a scientist at Texas A&M University’s Sportfish Center, said there are a handful of shark species in the West Bay region that exist in large numbers.
‘Especially in Texas, the most common species are blacktip sharks, spinner sharks, and bull sharks. During the summer we see hammerhead sharks and tiger sharks. They’re always there,’ he said.
Humphrey was on a Galveston beach with her family on vacation from Oklahoma, where they live, when the shark attacked her in shallow water.
The 19-year-old required immediate surgery for the injury, which severed four of the tendons in her hand.
Doctors say he is expected to make a full recovery with physical therapy.
Blacktip sharks and spinner sharks sometimes turn a tan color, so it’s likely that it was one of those two types that bit Damiana. In the photo: a blacktip shark
Humphrey has maintained a positive attitude after the match, but will be largely out of commission during the summer months.
Blacktip sharks and spinner sharks sometimes turn a tan color, so it’s likely that it was one of those two types that bit Damiana.
Banks said the number of shark encounters tends to increase in the summer due to the greater number of people in the water.
Experts advise that to prevent a shark attack, people can follow some tips, including: shuffling when walking in the ocean and avoiding intersections between the ocean and other bodies of water, such as rivers, because there are usually many fish that sharks feed on in those areas.
People should also avoid swimming around or near a school of fish, get into the water if it bleeds, and, if a shark bites you, fight it off.
Humphrey did exactly the right thing when he punched his attacker. Hitting a shark’s nose or gills with your fist can cause it to break away.
