When a 10- to 12-foot tiger shark cruised up on Kansas physician Ken Grasing and slashed his arm at Hapuna Beach, it all happened so fast it seemed like a blur.
“I didn’t realize it was going to attack me until I looked down and my arm was just mangled,” said Grasing, 58, from The Queen’s Medical Center on Oahu Friday afternoon. “I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t really feel it. The first indication was the feeling of light-headedness.”
Grasing is expected to make a full recovery following the Wednesday afternoon attack that shut down the Kohala beach for two days. Surgeons at Queen’s repaired nine tendons, a nerve and a muscle in Grasing’s left forearm.
Grasing, of Overland Park, Kan., was snorkeling with his two sons around noon, and was standing in about four feet of water looking out to sea when he saw the dark shape move up on him.
“I had this feeling like, is it really happening to me?” Grasing recounted. “Then when it bit me I was like, yes, this is real.”
Grasing struck the shark once with his free hand. The animal was immovable, like a massive wall, he said. His two sons, Mike, 18, and Dan, 16, began to yell for help. Grasing worried the shark would go after his sons next. Standing closer to shore than his father, Mike Grasing stood stunned, not knowing how to react.
A bystander helped Grasing away from the scene, and onshore, towels were used to help staunch the bleeding. Responding lifeguards used a tourniquet on the wound, and Grasing was transported to North Hawaii Community Hospital before being flown to Queen’s.
The shark left the area but returned and could be seen an hour later swimming just outside the break line at the empty beach. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources kept the area closed until Friday because of concerns about poor visibility and the shark’s aggressive behavior.
“I’m expected to make a full recovery,” said Grasing, who sounded to be in good spirits in a room full of media. “It’s just a bump in the road for me.”
It was Grasing’s third trip to Hawaii but his first to the Big Island. The family was having an early celebration of the eldest son’s graduation from high school. Despite the attack, Grasing talked enthusiastically about what he had seen snorkeling the reef for about an hour before he was bitten.
“We had a great day snorkeling,” he said. “We saw all different kinds of fish. We saw an octopus.”
But Grasing doesn’t know if he’ll go snorkeling again, and said it concerned him that the tiger returned to the beach after the attack.
“I was out there for over an hour, but it attacked me right in the public area where all the people were,” he said.
Last October, a 12- to 15-foot tiger shark attacked Kailua-Kona surfer McKenzie Clark off Halaula Lighthouse in North Kohala. The shark missed on the first lunge, causing McKenzie and her board to ramp up on the animal’s back. The tiger then made a second pass, latched onto McKenzie’s board and began to pull her seaward by the board’s leash. The shark had dropped the board and was returning for McKenzie when her companion Brian Wargo grabbed the dorsal fin and beat it repeatedly in the gills with his fist, causing the shark to leave the area.
McKenzie, 34, received 20 stitches to her left hand, a skin graft to one finger, and a 15-inch bite in the board.