Speared by a swordfish
British tourist’s lucky escape as predator leaps from sea and buries spike in his neck... missing his jugular by a millimetre
A BRITISH tourist dodged death by a millimetre when he was speared in the throat by a swordfish.
Retired postman Alan Pope was in a boat preparing for a snorkelling trip in Indonesia when the fish leapt from the ocean and stabbed him in the neck.
The impact threw the 57-year-old to the floor of the boat and snapped the tip of the fish’s long bill – leaving six inches in his neck and blood gushing from the wound.
The bill – about the same size, shape and sharpness of a kitchen knife – narrowly missed all the major arteries in his neck.
His wife Sharon said: ‘I thought he’d been shot. I heard this thud and saw him on the floor of the boat with a hole in his neck, like a bullet circle. Then he started coughing and spitting up blood.’
It was so close to his jugular and carotid arteries that it took 36 hours, and three hospitals, before doctors dared remove it because of the risks of the surgery.
Mr Pope and his wife did not see the swordfish, but locals said it probably bounced back into the water. It may have been a young one – the remains of its bill had teeth, and swordfish lose their teeth once their bodies grow beyond 3ft.
The Popes, from Northampton, were off the island of Lembongan when the incident occurred. ‘We hired a little wooden private charter boat to take us out; it was just me, my wife and the man in charge of the boat,’ said Mr Pope.
‘The water was quite choppy, but we got about half an hour out to sea when I felt this whack on the side of my head. It knocked me off
‘It knocked me off my feet’
my feet. I wasn’t sure what had happened, and then I felt this tickling in the back of my throat.’
He had to endure a 30-minute boat ride to shore trying to stem the blood. He said: ‘The beak missed my jugular by a millimetre. The doctors said that if the surgery had gone wrong I could have bled out in three minutes.’
Mrs Pope, 55, a former school attendance officer, added: ‘It was a really scary experience but he was such a Trojan. He never complained. He’s a very lucky man.’
The couple were visiting Bali as part of their plan to travel around the world in retirement. They had been looking forward to their snorkelling trip at the spot which was recommended as one of the best places to see manta rays.
Staff at the tiny medical centre removed the top half of the bill from his neck; the other half was too deeply embedded for them to safely reach it. But Mr Pope said: ‘Taking out that half was the worst thing they could do – they should have left it in. Someone then told us we had to go back to Bali to a proper hospital. So we rushed back to our hotel, threw everything in a bag and had to get a boat to the mainland – all while I had a swordfish beak stuck in my throat.’ Even after the couple arrived in Bali, they had to visit two hospitals because doctors were not sure how to safely remove the rest of the bill. Mr Pope said that despite an Xray at the first hospital confirming the bill lodged in his throat, he was then sent 40 minutes away to a second hospital for a CT scan.
He said: ‘The beak was right in the middle of a fork between two main arteries.’ It was not until 36 hours after the incident, and after a three-and-a-half hour operation, that the bill was removed.
After a few days recovering, the couple flew to Australia. Mr Pope took the swordfish bill home with him – and has since had a tattoo of a swordfish done on his arm.