I Lost a Hand and a Leg in a Shark Attack. This Is My Story.
Former Australian Navy diver Paul de Gelder is scared of only two things in life: sharks and public speaking. But after losing his right hand and leg in a shark attack during a routine military exercise, de Gelder somehow became a motivational speaker and shark advocate.
As a teen, de Gelder felt like he was floating through life without purpose. He had brief stints as a bartender and failed rapper (he once opened for Snoop Dogg), and even turned to dealing drugs at one point. He finally found happiness after becoming a clearance diver in the Navy, which means he was part of a unit that performs underwater demolitions and safely disposes of explosives in the water.
In 2009, de Gelder was testing new Navy tracking technology when he was attacked by a shark. He lost a hand and a leg, was fitted with prosthetics, and spent months recuperating so he could return to work.
Before the accident, de Gelder admits to thinking sharks were dangerous creatures that were better off dead. But as he started speaking publicly about his experience, he ended up learning how vital they are to our ecosystems. Sharks keep our oceans healthy by controlling populations of other fish species, which impacts the decline of coral reef and even the types of fish available for human consumption.
Now, de Gelder works with various organizations to educate the public about sharks in an attempt save the 100 million killed each year in the commercial fishing trade.
In honor of the Discovery Channel's 30th anniversary of Shark Week, July 22-29, MensHealth.com spoke to de Gelder about his harrowing experience. Catch the former navy hero on Sharkwrecked, airing July 26, and Bloodline, airing July 27.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
I joined [the military] in November 2000. It was kind of like my last vestige of hope for adventure. I was just bumbling through life searching for adventures and fulfillment trying to do something special, and I just kept failing. I came to the conclusion that maybe the army could provide that for me.
I ended up becoming a paratrooper, which is an infantry soldier usually sent in as one of the first crews to jump in behind enemy lines. In April 2002, I went on my first overseas trip as a United Nations peacekeeper to the southeast Asian island of East Timor.
I returned home toward the end of 2002 feeling like I’d just won the Super Bowl. I finally just got to do my job for real. I wanted to do it again, and feel like I was really serving my country.
That’s when I heard about the clearance divers. I knew they were pretty badass. I thought, "What’s stopping me from being someone that the rest of the military looks up to?"
It took a full 12 months before my transfer paperwork even went to the Navy, so it was a lot of patience, a lot of perseverance, and a lot of training as well. I went through that selection process in April 2005. I ended up finding my dream job.
I got attacked February 11, 2009.
The research and development section of the Navy had built this new automated device that they could put on ships, wherever we were around the world, and you could track movements in the water. The R&D department was trying to test this new equipment.
I jumped into the water for only about four or five minutes. Before I even knew it, I just got this massive whack in my leg, and I really didn’t know what it was, because it didn’t hurt. I turned back around to see what was going on, and that’s when I came face-to-face with a massive grey shark head.
I’d never seen anything like that before. My brain couldn’t actually process what I was seeing. We were staring eye-to-eye for what felt like minutes, but it was probably the blink of an eye. And then my survival instincts kicked in, and I thought, "I’ve got to get this thing off me."
So I tried to jab it in the eyeballs, since that was the closest thing to my arm, but I couldn’t move my arm. I didn’t know why until I looked down. I could see teeth all across my leg and all across my wrist. The shark had bitten my leg and my hand with the same bite, so I had no hand to fight it off with.
I tried with my left, but I couldn’t reach the eyeball. I tried to push up by the nose, but that only pushed the teeth of the lower jar deeper into my leg, and that’s when the pain started to kick in. So I tried to punch it in the head, but the shark must have realized that I was edible. It started to shake me.
You can imagine what it feels like to have two rows of about 36 razor blades on either side of your leg and your wrist, just shredding their way through your flesh. I can’t even describe it. At the same time it was taking me underwater, so I was drowning. I realized there’s nothing I could do to get away from this animal that probably weighs about 600 pounds and was made of muscle, so I literally gave up.
The shark removed my hamstring. It removed my hand. Fortunately, my wet suit made me buoyant, and I popped to the surface.
I started to swim. I took a stroke with my right arm and I could see that my hand was totally gone. There was blood coming out of it. I’m swimming with one hand. I’m kicking with one leg because I can’t even feel my right leg.
I ended up swimming through a pool of my own blood back to the safety boat.
I ended up keeping my leg for a week, but the shark had removed my entire hamstring, part of my quad, and all of the nerves as well, so I couldn’t feel it. My hand, they couldn’t save. They just sort of pinched the skin over my forearm bone. But the leg, we had to make a decision. I couldn’t feel it, so there was no point keeping it.
The doctor said, "We can have you walking, possibly running, on a prosthetic within 12 months." We ended up doing that, and it was really, really hard. I went through about 20 hours where they couldn’t manage my pain after surgery. I begged my mom to get me a gun so I could shoot myself. I wished that the shark had killed me. It was a really, really rough 20 hours, but eventually they did get it under control, and I just started thinking about my future.
I loved my job, and I loved my life. I fought really, really hard to create that life from nothing, and I just wasn't ready to give that up. I really, really needed that job. It made me feel whole. It gave me purpose and value. And so I made the decision to just fight back.
I spent nine weeks in the hospital doing as much rehab on my own as I could. Then I went home, and I had a lot of my best friends driving me to the gym everyday if I could bear the pain.
I was self-medicating with massive amounts of drugs. I knew what it was like to live in a haze [Editor's note: de Gelder told MensHealth.com that he used drugs as a teenager], and I was self medicating with Oxycontin. I came to the realization that I did regret all of those years in my hometown smoking weed and doing drugs. I didn’t want that life again. That was one of the driving motivators to get me off of drugs faster than I was even supposed to be.
So, I just went back to training. I was down at the Army base every day trying to work out - trying to learn how to use my body again, because having one hand and one leg can really mess up your bench press and squats.
I went back to work after six months. The chief of Navy said that as long as I wanted a job in the navy I had one, but I don’t think he realized I wanted my old job back.
To be on the diving team, you have to be deployable for war. I realized I wasn't going to be great in a combat situation, but what about if I go to the diving school and teach? I just worked my ass off trying to prove to them that I was worthy of my title, and was killing myself trying to keep up.
I started getting asked to do speaking presentations. I turned them down for quite some time because I was terrified of sharks and public speaking, but I got asked to speak at a cancer camp for kids. I went in there, and it was just such a rewarding experience making these kids laugh and forget that they were sick.
I started doing more and more [speaking], to the point where after three-and-a-half years, I was making my two weeks' Navy wage in one hour. It got to the point where it was either, do I stay in the Navy and not do this speaking? Or, do I leave my guaranteed [Navy] paycheck to try this new career that may last a year or two?
Every time I’ve been faced with a big scary decision like this, I made the big scary choice, and it’s always worked out in the end. This was another big scary decision that I needed to make to change my life for the better.
I left the Navy in August 2012 and become a full-time speaker - and it literally changed my whole life.
I had to become somewhat of a shark expert out of necessity, because the publicity from that shark attack was so huge. The more I learned about them, the more I understood how at threat their populations are, the challenges they’re facing and also about the roles they play in our ocean.
One of the things that always surprised me initially was how much fear humans have of sharks and how much fear they should have of us. We are absolutely terrified of sharks, and yet, sharks kill very few people all around the globe. We kill over a hundred million sharks a year. That’s a ridiculous amount. What we’re doing to the ocean is just absolutely unconscionable. We’re not even talking about pollution now; this is just fishing. It’s a multi-faceted attack on the life of our planet, and that’s why I do what I do.
Everyone asks me how they can be involved. Start locally. Find out who's doing work in your local community. You can spread the word.
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