Survivor of the shark attack stops nightmares after promise

A punch and a promise that survivor of shark attack made Craig Ison almost 10 years ago kept him alive.

Warning: This story contains a photo and graphic descriptions of injuries of the shark attack.

The ex-boxer, who went a few rounds with former world champion Jeff Fenech, thinks a blow to the snout of the big white that bite him at Evans Head on July 31, 2015, and made sure it let go of his left leg.

While he recovered in the hospital from his injuries, Mr. Ison made a pact with himself: to appear mentally to the attack, he would never surf again.

“When I was in the hospital, I had a number of really tough nightmares,” he said.

“I decided there in the hospital, that’s it, I’m not going back in the water, and since then I have had no problems.”

Apart from the occasional swimming in the ocean, Mr. Ison kept his promise and had a positive effect on his life.

“If I was a young guy, I would push through it a bit,” he said.

“But I was 51, so I had a good part of the waves and I thought ‘that will do me’, and since then I have not had any nightmares.”

Another factor that helped Mr. Ison’s recovery was the intervention of Bite Club founder Dave Pearson.

The first rule of Bite Club, a support group for people who have been bitten or witnessed an attack by an Apex Predator, is that you are talking about your experiences.

Whether it was Mr. Ison’s attack 10 years ago, or the most recent incident with a 16-year-old boy on Norries Cove near Cabarita Beach last Sunday, Mr. Pearson’s support group has been a much needed lifeline.

Mr. Pearson said that such attacks have a wrinkle effect on the community, in particular rescuers, colleague -surfers, first responds and even people who regularly use the beach.

Like many, Mr. Pearson supervised graphic images of last Sunday’s attack on social media that showed the shark in the shallow water swimming in the shallow water, while surfers helped the teenager in safety.

It reminded him of his own attack by a 3-meter bullhaai on the Mid North Coast of NSW in 2011.

“The shark followed me all the way to the beach, and that happens much more than people realize,” he said.

Mr. Pearson said that the teenager would initially feel the happiness to have survived the attack, but his recovery could be plagued by other problems in the longer term.

“Usually the mental side of things only starts a while after that. It is usually a period of weeks or months before you really start to feel the full effects of the post -traumatic stress,” he said.

Bodhi McDonald was one of the surfers in the water that day. He is also as old as the teenager who was attacked.

“It all cost us surprised because it is such a horrible event to take place on our beach that we surf almost every day,” he said.

Queensland Volunteer Redder, Thiago Collela was also there on the day of the attack and helped an off-duty paramedic to apply a tourniquet to stop bleeding.

“The crack on his biceps was real, very bad. You could see all the muscles and bone,” he said.

Mr. Collela is a colleague -surfing and said that the shark attack had made him a little nervous to get back into the water.

Mr. Pearson said that the bite club has not only treated lions, bears and crocodiles through sharks, but lions. It was also open to anyone who had witnessed an attack.

“Those people who are responsible for saving your life can then go through quite a bit of trauma because they have a second councils what they have and did not do,” he said.

The attack on Cabarita took place in an area that under the NSW Shark Management Program and the implementation of Smart Drum Lines. There are four drum lines in the Norries Cove area.

These drum lines used Haken and GPS communication to intercept and tag sharks near beaches.