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In this photo by Laura Joyce of goofyfootphotography.com, two men carry a swimmer, second from right, after he was bitten by a great white shark, as lifeguards close in at left in the ocean off Southern California’s Manhattan Beach, Saturday, July 5, 2014. The man, who was with a group of long-distance swimmers when he swam into a fishing line, was bitten on a side of his rib cage according to Rick Flores, a Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesman. The man’s injuries were not life-threatening and he was taken to a hospital conscious and breathing on his own, Flores said. (AP)
Steven Robles was an hour into his regular weekend swim off some of Southern California's most popular beaches when he came face-to-face with a great white shark.
The 7-foot (2.13-meter)-long juvenile had been trying to free itself from a fisherman's hook for about half an hour.
"It came up to the surface, it looked at me and attacked me right on the side of my chest," Robles told KABC-TV.
"That all happened within two seconds, I saw the eyes of the shark as I was seeing it swim toward me. It lunged at my chest, and it locked into my chest."
As a reflex, he tried to pry open the shark's mouth.
"I was like, 'Oh my God, this is it. Oh my God, I'm going to die. This is really, this is it,'" Robles told CNN.
And then, just as quickly as it struck, the shark let go and swam away.
Robles was familiar with the waters of the Southern California coast. His Saturday morning routine included a swim from Hermosa Beach north to Manhattan Beach with fellow amateur distance swimmers, and last summer he completed a difficult swim approximately 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Santa Catalina Island to the Rancho Palos Verdes peninsula to raise money for a school in Nicaragua.
Robles had been going for 2 miles with about a dozen friends Saturday when he encountered the shark around 9:30 a.m., fellow swimmer Nader Nejadhashemi said Sunday.
"He said 'I've been bit,' and he was screaming," said Nejadhashemi, who didn't see the shark even though he was just 5 feet away.
At first Nejadhashemi thought it must be a cramp. "Then," he said, "I saw the blood."
Nejadhashemi reached his friend and checked that "all his extremities were intact," then comforted him as others in the group flagged a nearby paddle boarder.
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