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Steinley said the shark’s teeth marks were imprinted in two places on his leg and one on his surfboard, a 6-foot-2 swallow tail that he often stored in the back of his Mazda 3 hatchback. Doctors told Steinley that a nerve in his leg was severed, and partially crushed, during the attack. On Tuesday, a surgeon at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital performed what was expected to be one of many operations on Steinley’s right leg. “It was amazing to see all these guys in wetsuits marching me up the hill.” “I want to make sure everyone knows how thankful I am,” Steinley said, noting that he was grateful for the care he got from surfers, lifeguards, paramedics, doctors and others who helped out. Steinley was treated in an ambulance that had come from Bodega Bay before a CHP helicopter crew arrived and flew him to the hospital in Santa Rosa. Lifeguards, firefighters and other first responders arrived moments later. In the lot, they transferred him onto a bed of ice plant and began cutting off part of his wetsuit. The surfers heaved Steinley onto a longboard and carried him, lying on his stomach, up a staircase to the paved parking lot, just ashore of where he had been surfing. This device is unable to display framed content.
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Somebody else grabbed a first aid kit and fished out a proper tourniquet. Another tied a second surfboard leash around Steinley’s leg.
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One of them jogged up a cliff to his car and called 911. The other surfers, who had been scattered at different peaks along Salmon Creek Beach, got out of the water and rushed over to help. He unfolded the Velcro straps to detach the leash from his surfboard and looped the urethane cord around Steinley’s leg, tying it down to act as a tourniquet. When he reached the sand, he crawled himself up away from the water’s edge.ĭavis got there moments later. Don’t look back.’ And then I told him, ‘It’s going to be OK.’”Ī wave crashed behind them and Steinley hooked into it, riding on his stomach as he took it all the way in. “He asked me, ‘How does it look?’” Davis recalled. Steinley estimated he was 50 yards from the beach, but the paddle in “felt like ages.” At one point, he glanced back at the blood pouring from his leg and thought he might never make it to the sand. Steinley caught up to Davis as they both headed for shore and the two strangers paddled next to each other "stroke for stroke,“ Steinley said. He tried to punch the shark in the face, slicing his hand on its teeth, and then pushed it away.Īfter freeing himself from the creature’s jaws, Steinley righted himself on his board and paddled for shore, yelling out to warn the group of about 10 other surfers in the water that a shark was lurking among them. Realizing that a shark had latched onto him, Steinley began to wrestle himself free. “Then I grabbed it in the eye, not so much aggressively, just trying to figure out what it was.” “I reached down with my right hand and touched its massive face,” he said, recounting the shark attack just north of Bodega Bay that left him with severe injuries. “The feeling was very heavy, like swimming with a bag of bricks on you,” Steinley, 38, said Tuesday in a phone interview from his bed in the intensive care unit at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.
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Sitting on his surfboard during a lull between waves on Sunday morning off North Salmon Creek Beach, Eric Steinley felt something clamp down on his leg and drag him underwater.