John Schweizer, 69, of Niantic, Connecticut, was on a cruise excursion celebrating his 40th wedding anniversary with his adult children in the Bahamas when he was bitten by a shark.
While snorkeling with his wife, Marcy, and sons Tom and Joe, Schweizer was attacked by a seven-foot reef shark that latched onto his left shin, dragging him underwater. His wife initially admonished him, believing he was "fooling around."
"My wife was yelling at me to stop fooling around," Schweizer told the Daily Mail. His son Tom had seen the shark approaching his father but was unable to warn him in time.
Schweizer immediately realized he had been bitten and swam approximately 40 feet back to the boat. The wound exposed bone, but he reported no significant pain, attributing this to adrenaline. Passengers on the boat used towels and tourniquets to control the bleeding while they waited for a speedboat to transport him to shore and then back to their cruise ship. The process to get him medical attention took about 20 minutes.
An ER doctor on the cruise ship cleaned Schweizer's wounds and administered 26 stitches to his leg and four to his hand, which he believes may have encountered the shark's fin. The procedure took three hours. This incident occurred on the final day of the cruise, allowing Schweizer to attend an onboard dinner before docking in Miami, where he was advised to seek hospital care for infection prevention.
Upon returning home to Connecticut the following day, neighbors greeted him dressed in shark costumes. Schweizer, an avid fisherman who has encountered tiger sharks in the Long Island Sound, expressed that while he is generally comfortable around sharks, he found the larger sharks in the Bahamas intimidating. He stated he would not swim with sharks again. According to the Florida Museum of Natural History, Caribbean reef sharks can grow up to 10 feet long, and attacks on humans are rare, with only four recorded instances.
