Diver Henry Gibbs, a New Zealand influencer who is passionate about freediving, was attacked by a shark while he was off the coast of Fiji with a wetsuit and spear gun with a group of friends. After a couple of hours along the coral reef, as Gibbs himself says, the group moved into deeper waters to look for larger prey, when a gray reef shark began to circle them in an increasingly aggressive and agitated manner.
“He became more and more nervous, we would have to stop the dive”
“It is possible that the confusion created by the boat, the noise of our spearguns and the activity in the water have slowly aroused curiosity or agitated the shark” said the influencer on Instagram. “I’ll never know for sure what triggered that change, but at a certain point (the shark, ed.) started making tight semicircles beneath us, becoming more and more nervous until it even lunged towards the boat. Looking back, after that signal we should have stopped the dive. I never thought that a shark of that size could represent a big threat, and it was a mistake.”
Gray reef sharks rarely exceed two meters in length, but if they feel threatened they can become very dangerous. As the video shows, the specimen in question rose to the surface in a flash, throwing itself violently at the diver.
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“I knew he was coming towards me,” Gibbs further explained in the text accompanying the video, “and that’s why in the video I start to get agitated before he even reached me. He dodged the rifle, got under me and bit the back of my calf.”
“I’m lucky to still have my leg”
After the attack, the influencer published a post from his hospital bed to reassure him about his health condition. “My first dive in Fiji ended with a bad shark incident,” it reads. “I feel incredibly lucky to still have my leg, my foot fully functional and to be on the mend.”
“After four surgeries and a skin graft, it looks like I will make a full recovery, and for that I am enormously grateful,” Gibbs further explained on Instagram.
“No hard feelings towards the shark. I was hunting in his environment. Wrong place, wrong time, and there are definitely some lessons that I will share when I release the video, in the hope that they can help someone avoid being in the same situation and understand how to react. For now, I just feel very lucky and with a greater awareness of the value of life.”