‘I will go back in the water’
Blood gushed from Andrew “Nugget” Brough’s wetsuit after a Great White attacked The 25-year-old surfer will undergo surgery today for a gash to his arm after coming face to face with a shark But he’s counting his blessings and plans to keep the shark’s
An instant after a great white shark lunged at his surfboard, Andrew “Nugget” Brough saw blood gushing from his wetsuit and knew his life was in peril.
“Oh, I’m in a bit of trouble here,” he thought.
The shark had sunk its teeth into Brough’s left arm and hand, leaving a large bite mark in his board and an embedded tooth.
The incident also left tooth fragments in his wounds. The 25-year-old is due to undergo surgery today and will need at least 40 stitches.
He plans to keep the tooth lodged in his battered board and the fragments plucked from his arm as souvenirs.
Speaking to the Herald on Sunday from his hospital bed in Whangarei yesterday, Brough described his close encounter off Northland’s west coast about 6pm on Friday.
Brough had been paddling for about 30 minutes at Baylys Beach near Dargaville with his best friend Tohi Henry.
“Something come up and hit me in the face, obviously bit my arm . . . but my initial reaction was [had] a surfer come into me?”
Moments later he noticed blood gushing from his wetsuit into the water. He realised he’d been attacked. “That’s when it all set in,” he said. “Oh, it’s a shark.”
Then he saw the shark’s body flip over his board and start thrashing underneath him.
Brough said he yelled to the three surfers around that he had been bitten by a shark as he started paddling 150m towards the shore.
A Whangarei firefighter rushed over to help, along with Henry, and a resident took Brough in his ute to a vacant lot to wait for emergency services.
“I was worried . . . Am I going to bleed out? I couldn’t feel my hand,” he said. “I knew it was bad. I went to close my fist and my finger went inside a wound quite deep.”
Paramedics stopped the bleeding and covered up his wounds before Brough was airlifted by the Northland Rescue Helicopter to Whangarei Hospital for surgery on his arm.
“I’m quite lucky that if my board hadn’t been there, then it would’ve been all over,” he said. “It was a brand new board too.”
Brough’s mum, Tracy, told the Herald on Sunday the family was still in shock.
Her son had only recently moved back from living in Western Australia for seven years. “And this happens to him at home.”
Beaming, though clearly still in pain, Brough said he “100 per cent” planned to get back out on the water — even as soon as he was discharged.