Surfer Survives Shark Attack

A woman was attacked in northern California waters by a 14-foot shark that experts believe was a great white.

After the attack, Megan Halavais didn't realize she had been bitten until an eyewitness unwittingly brought it to her attention.

The trauma surgeon who treated her says she came "very close" to losing her leg since the bite came within a centimeter of a major artery.

David Bryant, a friend who was surfing with Halavais, 20, of Santa Rosa, Calif.,

"John Henry and I just started paddling as fast as we could towards her," Bryant said. "I had a very strong feeling that we were not just gonna have that thing swim by and leave. As we started swimming towards it, it became agitated and it started making moves towards her and started splashing and making very aggressive movements.

"When we were just converging on the scene, her boyfriend and I got within five feet of her before the shark actually pulled her underwater, and there was no sign of her board or her.

"At that point, my heart sank. I thought, 'Oh, my God. I mean, is that the last time we're going to see her?' And right as we got to the zone where she was, she surfaced right next to us. And when she crawled on the back of her boyfriend, I could see the wound pretty clearly."

Halavais had hit the shark on its tail to get it off her.

Bryant said Halavais "actually had no idea that she had been cut by the shark. I made the mistake of alerting her to that while we were in the water trying to get back to shore, when I was instructing her boyfriend to use direct pressure and find the pressure point to make the bleeding stop.

"She exclaimed, 'I'm cut?' And I told her, 'It's OK, it's not so bad. We just need to get you to shore and keep paddling nice and calmly like you're doing, and we'll take care of you."

But Bryant admits he wasn't sure.

"I could see that (the wound) was bad but it wasn't — there was not an artery hit, so it wasn't gushing and pumping blood out," he said. "So I felt like we had a really good chance, if everything went smoothly, to come out successful."

Dr. Dave Hardin, a trauma surgeon who treated Halavais at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, says she actually "came very close to losing her leg. We did a special angiogram using a C.A.T. scanner to look at the blood vessels, and the shark bite went all the way down to the bone and came very close to one of the major arteries, but was only about a centimeter away."

Hardin says he believes Halavais is out of harm's way now and should make a full recovery, adding that she needs another operation.

"With Megan's attitude and her good spirits," he said, "I'm sure she's going to do excellent."

Her spirits were so good during her initial treatment, Hardin said, that doctors were listening to Beach Boys music and joking with her as they worked on her.