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A 66-year-old man, Peter Smith, heroically fended off a fierce 10-foot bull shark using his bare fists to avoid being pulled under the water.
“I can honestly say,” Smith, a retired IT director from Hertfordshire, England, revealed to the BBC in his first interview since the terrifying encounter in April 2024, “I’ve never hit anything as hard as I hit that shark.”
Smith, along with his wife Joanna and their friends, was vacationing in Tobago—a place where shark attacks are notably rare, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History. Despite this, the unexpected unfolded during what seemed to be an idyllic getaway.
Recalling the incident that occurred on the final day of their holiday, Smith described the conditions as “perfect” for a swim. “I swim out no more than 20 feet and I stand up in waist-deep water,” he recounted to the BBC. “Suddenly I feel a very heavy object hit my leg, really hard. I look down and there’s a shark—and it’s big. You’re talking eight foot, maybe 10 foot.”
“I swim out no more than 20 feet and I stand up in waist-deep water,” he told the BBC. “Suddenly I feel a very heavy object hit my leg, really hard. I look down and there’s a shark—and it’s big. You’re talking eight foot, maybe 10 foot.”
Peter said he knew it was a bull shark, a species prone to shallow water and one of the most likely to attack humans.
Feeling the shark’s mouth clamp onto his leg, Peter made a split-second decision: It was sink or swim.
“I grab the shark, I start punching the shark,” Peter told the BBC. “I can honestly say I’ve never hit anything as hard as I actually hit that shark.”
Peter said the shark then attacked his left arm and his stomach.
“The situation got serious really fast,” he said. “I lost a lot of blood.”
His friend John entered the water and helped fend off the shark. Joanna, who was on the sand at the time, overheard panicked commotion and raced to the water’s edge.
When the shark suddenly released Peter from its grip, helpers dragged him onto shore.
“I remember going into the water and seeing his terrible injuries,” Joanna told the BBC. “I could see bones, it was just awful. And somebody said, ‘Get her away from here.’”
En route to a local hospital, Peter was quickly fading.
“I’m screaming, I’m crying, losing a lot of blood and losing consciousness,” he told the outlet. “People are screaming at me to stay awake.”
Peter sustained stomach lacerations, a large arm bite and a huge chunk of his upper thigh was gone.
Doctors had considered the possibility of amputating Peter’s limbs, however, it became clear that he needed the resources of a larger hospital.
“They’d run out of blood,” Joanna said. “He’d taken all the blood in Tobago.”
Peter was transferred to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida where he was operated on dozens of times.
When doctors told Peter that he would need a specific membrane placed over a wound, as preparation for a skin graft, they found irony.
“Then they laughed. So, we were saying, ‘Well, what’s funny?’ And they said, ‘The membrane is made from shark,’” Peter shared. “So, I have a piece of shark in my leg.”
Over time, Peter learned to walk again, but he still struggles with nerve damage that caused a loss of sensation in his fingers.
“I’m really grateful,” Peter admitted. “At least I have mobility issues. At least I have limbs. At one stage it looked like I wasn’t going to have any.”
Peter credits the “brave” group of people who came to his aid and fought the beast, saying, “I’m forever grateful to them.”