Shark attack victim Marlin Wakeman recounts encounter with death

The first shark bit him in the knee. The second shark bit him on the shoulder.

But somehow Marlin Deere Wakeman managed to pull himself out of the water and into a boat.

And two weeks later, the 24-year-old Florida native is still amazed that he survived his brush with death in one piece.

“Fortunately, I’m here to tell the story,” Wakeman said Thursday at a news conference at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. “But a pretty crazy experience.”

For the first time since the April 26 ordeal in a Bahamas marina, Wakeman spoke the kind of fishing story his famous fishing father Rufus Wakeman would tell his adoring audience on his “Mill House” podcast.

Wakeman said it happened at the Flying Fish Marina, where there are always a lot of sharks running around and feeding on the carcasses that fishermen throw into the water.

In fact, he said, the water is so crowded with 5- to 7-foot Caribbean reef sharks that at times “you can almost walk on your head.”

“Man, if you fell in here, you’d be screwed,” he remembered his friends telling him. “You won’t even have a second to really react.”

How true those words almost proved to be.

Wakeman, who lives in Stuart, Florida, said he was doing maintenance on a boat when he suddenly slipped and fell in.

“When I landed in the water I pretty much knew what was going to happen,” he said. “And when he bit me, I knew what was happening. I didn’t have a second of doubt.”

Wakeman said there was no time to let his life flash before his eyes.

“So it wasn’t like I was really scared at that moment,” he said. “I just knew what was going on. In my head I just knew how to get out as quickly as possible.”

Wakeman said the first shark submerged him before letting him go.

“I was very lucky that he didn’t shake his head or hold on for a while,” he said. “And then I was able to get back to the surface.”

Then the second shark came and bit him on the shoulder.

Wakeman said he didn’t feel any pain at first, but felt “a lot of pressure.”

“The hit on my shoulder felt like a punch,” he said. “You really can’t feel your teeth going in.”

Despite his injuries, Wakeman managed to drag himself back into the boat.

“I had so much adrenaline running through my body that it was like fight or flight,” he said. “I got back in the boat, thought about what had happened and looked at my leg. It wasn’t really bleeding yet. It was, you know, all mutilated.”

And that’s when Wakeman said he started screaming for help. He said his captain ran over, applied a tourniquet and lifted his leg up.

The pain only started, he said, when he was wheeled in a wheelbarrow to the van to be taken to a clinic.

“At that point there was a lot of bleeding and the adrenaline was wearing off a little bit and then we got in the van,” he said. “And when I was in the van, they took gauze. And I remember my captain looking at me and saying, ‘Hey, man, this is really going to hurt.’ And I thought, ‘You know, whatever.'”

At that time, Wakeman said, he passed out from the pain.

Wakeman was flown to Florida after paramedics in the Bahamas stitched him up “damage control style,” Dr. Robert Borrego, the medical director of trauma at St. Mary’s.

Judging by the size of the leg wound, Borrego said the young man had been bitten by “at least a seven or eight foot shark.”

“I’ve dealt with this a lot and I’ve seen some people who haven’t experienced this,” said Borrego, who said he has treated numerous shark bite victims over the past three decades. “And when I hear the story, it shocks me that he was able to get out of that water.”

The fact that Wakeman didn’t lose a leg was “amazing,” Borrego added.

Wakeman is still on crutches and will need to undergo rehab but should make a full recovery, the doctor said.

His father, Rufus Wakeman, said he was particularly grateful for the captain who applied the tourniquet and for the quick work of the Bahamian medics who prevented his son from bleeding to death and saved his life.

“I have several friends who have been bitten and it’s a shocking revelation when you see it,” he said. “Some of the wounds that these people endured. And now it’s my son. It’s our son. And it’s just scary.”

For his part, Wakeman said he’s excited to get back on the water and doesn’t think his near-death experience will haunt him for long.

“Maybe I’ll have a few nightmares here and there, but I think I’ll be fine,” he said.