Welcome to Bite Club – no sharks allowed

FLOATING astride his surf board, off the east coast of Australia, Dave Pearson had a conversation with the water: “I said, ‘Let’s move on from this’, and I meant it. It was a magical moment. I forgave the ocean for what had happened to me.”

In March 2011, in the exact spot off Crowdy Head Beach in New South Wales where his legs now dangled, a 3m bull shark had wrapped its jaws around Pearson’s arm, dragging him under.

He fought and managed to battle his way to the shoreline, his blood streaming through the waves.

“I lay on a picnic table for three hours after the attack, waiting for help, before the paramedics worked to stabilise me,” Pearson, 52, said.

“At one stage I thought, I’m not going to make it.”

The image of a fin slicing through the inky surface of the sea has haunted communal nightmares since Jaws hit cinema screens in 1975, and will no doubt be revived by The Shallows, just released.

But what happens to those who survive a real-life attack?

Besides an impressive scar and limited movement in his arm and fingers, Pearson seems relatively unscathed.

But in the early days, he would wake up in the night screaming.

“Stressful situations get to me now. I don’t lash out, but I become easily overwhelmed,” he said.

His experience inspired him to set up Bite Club, a social group to support survivors and victims’ loved ones, with its 300-odd members ranging in age from teens to grandparents, interacting via a closed Facebook page.

“Some people might want to go and kill every shark in the ocean. Others want to go into shark conservation. But we’re all trying to grow accustomed to a new normal.”