Cameron Whiting had just finished an easy 1.5-mile open-water swim and was bodysurfing Sunday morning at Del Mar Beach when a member of his swim group started yelling.
At first, Whiting heard only the terror in his voice; then her mind processed that she was yelling, “Shark!”
One of the newest members of the swimming group, a 46-year-old man whose name has not been released, had been attacked. The woman closest to him was screaming for help.
Since it was before 9 a.m. and the lifeguards were not on duty, help would have to come from the swimmers closest to the man in distress. They were Whiting and another member of the group, Kevin Barrett. The couple were about 100 meters from shore, while most of the others were back on the beach and thinking about having breakfast.
Barrett ran toward the man (and the shark) as fast as he could. Whiting, 31, who had trained as an ocean lifeguard, quickly scanned the shore to make sure someone was calling for help and then began swimming.
As he moved his arms furiously, two fears fought in his mind.
The first was realizing that he was swimming directly into an active shark attack. The second was her fear of what she might find when she got there. Would his swimming partner have all of his limbs? Would he be alive?
“That's what scared me the most,” Whiting said. “To get to him and realize…”
But when he completed the approximately 50-yard swim, just behind Barrett, they found the victim conscious and with his limbs intact. However, he was bleeding profusely.
They were about 150 meters from the shore; It was hard to imagine she could do it alone. When they turned her over, blood began to ooze from her wetsuit.
When they began to drag him towards the beach, a surfer approached and offered them his board.
They put him on the surfboard and Whiting got on the back to paddle. Barrett swam alongside him, stabilizing the victim. The woman who had asked for help followed them.
“That's when I started seeing the full extent of the blood,” Whiting recalled. He was “squirting down both sides of the board, leaving a big streak” in the water.
Whiting rowed as fast as he could. It crossed his mind that he was “surrounded by blood and that there is still a shark out there.” The trip to the coast “seemed like an eternity, but it probably lasted a few minutes.”
Finally, they came to a place where they could stand. The rescuers lifted the man and carried him, still face down on the board, up the beach.
By then, the lifeguards, who were nearby, waiting to go into service, had quickly arrived at the scene.
They placed the victim in the back of the rescue truck to evaluate his injuries.
The victim said the shark hit him once and then bit him. Then the shark approached him again. He attempted to punch him, throwing her fist towards his nose and suffering deep cuts to his arm in the process.
He also had lacerations on his torso, where the shark had bitten him on its first pass.
Whiting said he tried to shield the man from seeing the deep cuts on his chest.
They tied a tourniquet around his arm and then applied as much gauze as they could to the lacerations on his chest.
An emergency room doctor who had been walking his dog on the beach joined them, examined the wounds and advised rescuers to continue applying pressure.
Finally the ambulance arrived.
As paramedics lifted the man, Whiting tried to calm him down and told him he was going to be okay.
The man thanked him so calmly that Whiting wondered if he was shocked.
He was rushed to a hospital and is expected to survive. On Monday he was awake and smiling.
Following the attack, lifeguards closed Del Mar beach for 48 hours. Authorities urged the public to remain calm.
The ocean is full of sharks and they rarely harm humans, said John Ugoretz, environmental program director for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. When they attack, it's probably because they confuse humans with prey like a seal or sea lion, scientists theorize.
“Since 1950, there have been 215 shark incidents in California,” Ugoretz said. “That's less than three a year.”
Among them there were 16 deaths.
“It's incredibly rare to find even one shark,” Ugoretz said. “You're much, much, much more likely to get stung by a stingray.”
One thing is certain, Ugoretz said: Reports of encounters with sharks that do not result in injuries are increasing, but he doesn't blame the sharks for that.
“Two decades ago, if someone crashed and wasn't hurt, they could tell their friends,” he said. “Now they tell it to the entire Internet.”
State data shows that interactions with sharks that did not result in injuries began to increase around 2004. Facebook was founded the same year.
Jonathan Edelbrock, Del Mar's chief lifeguard and director of community services, said Sunday's conditions may have been confusing for the sharks.
The light was low and the water was cloudy, he said, similar to the last time a shark attacked a human at Del Mar Beach, in November 2022. That swimmer also survived.
Whiting has no intention of letting the incident keep him away from the ocean. In fact, he said, some of the swimmers in his group are already planning to get back in the water, albeit at a different beach.
“We're all passionate about being in the ocean,” he said.
