Surfer “critically injured” after hit by suspected Great White at Salmon Creek, north of San Francisco

"Next thing I heard the dude screaming. I knew he got bit.”

A surfer in this thirties has been choppered to the Santa Rosa Memorial Hozzy after being bitten on the upper thigh a little after nine this morning by a suspected Great White shark at Salmon Creek, sixty miles north of San Francisco.  

Other surfers in the water brought the man in to the beach parking lot where paramedics used a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. 

“I was out with five guys — we heard a couple people yell shark about 50 feet away,” a surfer named Cody told KPIX. “It was by the mouth of the river. The sharks come there to get salmon…Next thing I heard the dude screaming. I knew he got bit.”

The man is in a critical condition, say authorities, but is expected to live. 

Salmon Creek is a powerful beachie not dissimilar to San Francisco’s Ocean Beach and can hold ten-foot plus. It ain’t for babies. 

In 2005, another surfer Megan Halavais, was hit by an almost twenty-foot White at Salmon Creek Beach, the shark’s bite just missing the femoral artery in her leg.

“I had thought about being attacked, but never really pictured it in my head. I didn’t think the shark would be that big and yes it was very very powerful,” said Megan in an interview with Surfer. “I thought I was going to die. I screamed, but everyone said that it wasn’t a high-pitched loud scream, but a blood-curdling yell for help. I just remember thinking I was gonna die, then the desire to survive.”

Last May, the shaper Ben Kelly was killed by a ten-foot Great White while surfing at San Dollar Beach, south of San Francisco, but what is essentially the same stretch of coast when it comes to Whites. 

(Yeah, I know, the entire Californian coast is a White highway etc.)

A witness to that attack said, 

“Kelly was…bitten on the leg and knocked off his board. He quickly got back on and began paddling to shore — as did his friend who was surfing further outside. Once they got to shore, they used a surf leash from one of their boards as a tourniquet but couldn’t stop the bleeding in time.”