A diver fought off a great white shark that crunched his head and shoulders in its jaws by attacking its eyes with a chisel. Eric Nerhus, 41, was diving for abalone off the southern New South Wales coast when the three-metre great white struck. It took his head, shoulders and chest into its mouth and crushed his diving mask, smashing his nose. Dennis Luobikis, who was diving near by during the attack yesterday, said: “He was actually bitten from the head down. The shark swallowed his head.” Mr Nerhus, a professional diver, told doctors that he fought off the shark by lunging at its head repeatedly with a metal chisel, used to ply abalone off rocks. After releasing its grip around his head and chest, the shark struck again. It bit his torso, lacerating the diver and shredding the lower part of his wetsuit, before he beat it off again. With blood oozing from his wounds and his wetsuit in tatters, Mr Nerhus emerged from the weedy, nine-metre (30ft) deep waters off Cape Howe, near the fishing port of Eden. “He came up to the surface shouting, ‘Help, help, there’s a shark, there’s a shark’,” said Mr Nerhus’s son, Mark, 25, who was diving with his father. “I went over and there was a big pool of red blood. I pulled him out of the water and he was going, ‘Just get me to shore, get me to shore’.”
Divers in another boat gave first aid and one radioed his father, who was flying near by in a shark-spotting plane, to call for help. Reece Warren, a fisherman who sped Mr Nerhus to shore, said: “He had bite marks all around his chest, on the front and on his back. He said that he was swimming through seaweed and it (the shark) just grabbed him head on.”
Rescuers believe that Mr Nerhus’s lead-lined vest protected him from fatal injury. Most divers use lead weight to submerge but abalone divers use a lead vest rather than a belt. “We’ve always felt the vest would probably help us in a shark attack and this is the first time we’ve had it confirmed,” said Mr Luobikis, a professional diver for 33 years.