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July 30, 2006

Sharks - Moorea, French Polynesia

Colette HUMEAU, wife of my French guide, Bernard BEGLIOMINI in Moorea, was modeling on a scooter (this picture) when a small mesh bag of fish parts broke. Colette stopped the scooter and was immediately engulfed by a school of small fish in a feeding frenzy on the fish parts. In another split second, a small shark blindly rushed into the frenzy and mistakenly bit Colette's right leg. Fortunately, the shark's teeth were small and just punctured the skin. But, still, there were 20-some punctures bleeding green blood that took 20-some stitches to close (red is green at depth). The front page newspaper headlines all over Tahiti the next day were "Woman bit by shark!"

Immediately after the bite, I was signaling for everyone to go to the surface and tend to Colette, but she swam to me, checked the camera, saw there were something like a dozen frames left, and signaled she wanted to stay and finish. Tough gal.

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