Bethany, with the surfboard she was on when she was attacked by a shark

She Wasn’t Afraid to Get Back in the Water

Bethany Hamilton was born and raised near the beach in Hawaii. From a very young age, Bethany was one of those kids who really took to the water. Everyone in Bethany’s family surfed. Bethany, herself, began to surf at a very young age. She began to enter surfing competitions when she was only four or five years old. Bethany had a natural talent for the sport.

“I remember when I was around seven or eight when I really started getting into surfing because some of my best friends surfed and we just liked going to the beach and being in the ocean,” said Bethany. “When I realized I wanted to be a pro surfer, I was probably around eight or nine. I just started competing and doing really good in just like the amateur contests around Hawaii. One of my first major events was the Rell Sunn Annual Menehune Surfing Championships and that’s in Oahu and I did good in that and ended up winning it. I guess—even though I was really young—you could really see where my career was heading and how I was doing in it and it was looking really promising.”*

The day of the attack started off like every other day. It was Halloween of 2003. Bethany remembers that there were a lot of sea turtles in the water that day. She was out on the water surfing with her best friend Alana Blanchard. With them were Alana’s brother Byron and Alana’s father, Holt. Byron recalled that they had been on the water for about 30 to 40 minutes before the shark attack took place. Bethany was lying on her surfboard. She was dangling her left arm in the water.

The attack was sudden and unexpected. “We’re just sitting there and all of a sudden Bethany goes, ‘I got attacked by a shark,’” Holt Blanchard said.** In an interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Bethany recalled that she didn’t even raise her voice. She just calmly said, “I got attacked by a shark.”

At first, Holt thought that Bethany was kidding. “All of a sudden she was paddling in toward Byron and Alana and myself,” Holt said. “And I saw blood in the water and I realized she did get attacked. I paddled up to her and at that point I noticed her arm was gone.”** The shark had severed Bethany’s arm just below the shoulder. It had taken a chunk out of her surfboard as well.

Bethany’s shoulder was bleeding profusely. They were more than 200 yards from shore. Holt Blanchard knew that he had to do something quickly before Bethany bled to death. Holt used the leash of his surfboard to make a tourniquet that he tied around Bethany’s shoulder. He did this to stop the bleeding—doctors would later credit Holt’s quick-thinking in making the tourniquet with saving Bethany’s life. Amazingly, Bethany says that she didn’t feel any pain from the time when her arm was bitten off until she went into emergency surgery at the hospital.

Holt and family led Bethany to the shore. Paramedics soon arrived and rushed Bethany to the hospital. In an odd turn of events, Bethany’s father was already at the hospital. He was scheduled to have knee surgery that day. Bethany took his place in the operating room. By the time she got into surgery, Bethany had lost 60 percent of her blood. Her chances of survival were growing slimmer by the minute. But Bethany beat the odds and pulled through.

Based on the bite marks on her surfboard, experts guessed that the shark that attacked Bethany was probably a 14-foot tiger shark. Fisherman later caught a 14- foot tiger shark about a mile away from where Bethany was attacked. The shark had surfboard residue in its teeth. Experts matched the shark’s teeth to the bite marks on Bethany’s surfboard.

Possibly the most amazing part of Bethany’s story is not just that she survived the shark attack, but that one month later, she was back in the water and surfing again. Soon after, she began surfing in competitions once again. Bethany admits that there was a bit of a learning curve to surfing with only one arm. She had to learn to kick with her feet a lot more. Usually, surfers paddle to and from waves using their arms.

Surviving the shark attack alone had made Bethany world famous. But the bravery she showed by getting back into the water and onto her surfboard made her truly famous.

In 2004, Bethany published her autobiography Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board. A feature film called Soul Surfer based on her autobiography was released in 2011. Actress Anna Sophia Robb played Bethany. But Bethany did all of the surfing stunts for the movie.

Bethany continues to surf and competes as a professional surfer. She married a minister named Adam Dirks in 2013. Together they have two sons. Their first was born in 2015 and their second was born in 2018.

SOURCE
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePFKksD0XkQ
** http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=124360&page=1