The Most GRUESOME Shark Attacks MARATHON!

Jamari Reed wasn’t your typical 16-year-old obsessed with girls, fancy shoes, or shiny cars. While the other teenagers from the Trilonei area in northwest Jamaica were skipping school to get into trouble, Jamari was skipping school to go to the beach. The reason, spear fishing.

 Before the age of 10, Jamari’s parents were beside themselves with fury every time the school called to notify them of his absence, only to find him with a fishing pole and net in hand and a bucket full of fish enough to feed the family for the next few days. The subsistence fishermen around Montego Bay had taken a liking to the budding little fisherman, and they regularly snuck him onto their boats where he’d spend the day helping pull up nets, gut catches, and servicing boat engines with them.

 The grizzled men protected their naughty little protetége from punishment on more than one occasion. Once Jamari was out all day on one of the vessels, and when they got back, his parents, Michael and Leverne, were already waiting at the dock, belt in hand, and ready to administer a proper reminder of what happens to boys who skip school. But the old hats talked his father down and promised to always keep Jamari in sight.

 If the boy wanted to fish, let him fish, they said. And so Jamari fished. His father just implored him to never go out alone and to at least put in enough work to pass all of his subjects. As long as Jamari could do those two things, then they let him spend as much time on the water as he liked. He picked up the spear in his teens and then all of the rules went out the window again.

 Jamari did keep up with his schoolwork, at least that part of the deal remained intact. But now that he was a young adult, he was out in the surf alone most days. And well, a 16-year-old was no longer a mischievous child. He was a young man now, and the uncles didn’t report him to his parents for pushing the limits of his freedom anymore.

 Even the uncles, who had practically raised him on their boats, chided their favorite water child about going out by himself. Not that he paid anyone much mind, anyway. Jamari was now 16 and more knowledgeable about aquatic life, unpredictable tides, and dangers than most men twice his age. And with the confidence that can only come with youth, he was convinced that he’d live forever.

 And now that it was school holidays, Jamari spent every daylight moment out on the water fishing alone with a spear, unless one of the uncles requested a hand, of course. Monday the 26th of August, 2024, dawned bright, hot, and ideal for a day of hunting. Jamari was out the door, heading to Montego Bay before his parents had even woken up.

 Naturally, his bucket was already halfway full with fish before 9 that morning. He had a spot of breakfast on a fisherman’s boat who just happened to sail by. To say thanks, Jamari helped the grizzled old man to fix a hole in his net. The man left Jamari at his crop of rocks 50 yards from shore. And that was the last time that the harbor’s favorite young fisherman was ever seen alive again.

 He skipped over the rocky outcrop, snapped on his goggles, and submerged himself into the crystalclear water, where he could already see the glinting bodies of tonight’s dinner darting around under his feet. Spear in hand, he had his first catch. A reasonably sized doctor fish in just 10 minutes. That thin trickle of blood that escaped the puncture wound dissolved into the water, alerting a 14 ft tiger shark on the other side of the reef.

Jamari added his fish to his bucket, got his spear at the ready, and went back down. This time, he spied a barracuda. This was a very special find. Barracudas don’t come this close to shore too often, and they’re known for being very hard to catch. There even spearishers trophy catch worthy of bragging at the dock about at the end of the day when all the boats came in.

 Already imagining the uncle slapping him appreciatively on the back. Jamari took this dive slow and steady. He needed to apply stealth if he were going to stand a chance at spearing the notoriously fast fish. But Jamari was no longer the only one stalking prey in those waters. The tiger shark was hunting, too.

 It sliced through the water, ignoring all of the other silver fishes darting out of its path. It wasn’t focused on them when there was a much larger, more dectable specimen within reach. It came in from behind, made a wide half moon circle to Jamari’s right. When it came in, it was going as fast as that aquatic body would allow, bargaining on surprise to catch the human offg guard rather than strength.

Jamari couldn’t have anticipated what was coming. The beast that barreled out of the blue toward him only came into sight when it was 7 ft away. And by that time, it was too late for the boy to react. Had he seen it sooner, Jamari might have been able to use the spear to defend himself.

 Instinctively, he raised his right arm, still grasping the spear to brace for the impact he couldn’t stop from happening. It snapped its jaws around Jamari’s spear arm, dislodging his only weapon and sending it lazily floating to the bottom while a fight for life and death was raging above it. The shark shook its head twice, tearing Jamari’s arm clean off.

 The water around them bloomed red and exploded with bubbles as Jamari screamed silently into the water’s void. The animal sped off with the arm, devouring it as it went. Jamari tried to kick upwards, but already the life flowing out of him was draining him of all his strength. The white sunlight from above became dimmer and dimmer as the darkness of unconsciousness crept into his vision.

He didn’t even notice the scores of smaller fish swarming him to investigate the tantalizing smell of blood. The scavengers scattered when the beast returned. It had swallowed the arm, spun around, and returned for more. Only this time, it took the dying boy by the head, and swam the whole body into deeper waters where it wouldn’t have to compete with other fish for its catch.

 By then, Jamari was unconscious, and water was flooding his lungs. He didn’t feel the rows of teeth puncturing his neck and jaw. When the animal decided it was far enough into the deep, it rammed its teeth down, decapitating Jamari, who was already deceased. It’s hard to say whether he died from blood loss or drowning.

 But at least he didn’t have to suffer through that final assault. The day went by with no one the wiser. Boats came and went. Swimmers passed by the reef and no one noticed Jamari’s possessions abandoned on the outcrop. That is until the man Jamari had eaten lunch with passed the reef to return his vessel to the dock. He saw the bucket standing unattended on the rocks with no Jamari surfacing to add more fish to it.

He didn’t have to wait for confirmation. He knew something was terribly wrong here. He docked his boat and hitched a ride from other fishermen heading home. Together, they headed to the Reed family home to tell them about their findings. For the rest of the daylight hours, every fisherman, all of the Reed family members, police, and half the town, were out searching.

 When night fell, they continued searching from their boats and from the beach with spotlights. It wasn’t until the next morning that a group of beach searchers found Jamari’s remains washed up on shore. Unfortunately, Michael heard their calls of alarm and ran over to investigate, still hoping for a miracle. Whatever Michael was expecting, it wasn’t seeing his son’s dead body, head and arm missing, lying on the beach.

 He gave a strangled cry of despair and sank to his knees. The town’s people rushed toward him, bodily dragged him away from the scene before he saw even more of his son’s ruined body. Michael was delivered to the hospital completely delirious with grief and horror. There, he was sedated for 24 hours.

 When Michael was discharged, Jamari’s remains were already released from the morg, and the town was in the process of arranging the funeral to spare the family as much effort as possible. Jamari was buried in the usual traditional way with church, prayers, and attendance for more than half the town. But it’s the unconventional funeral after that that really mattered.

 The men of the sea and Jamari’s parents and siblings fared out into the deep, a convoy of small fishing vessels following them. All of Jamari’s special uncles were there, as well as the women who bought his catches off him for the market. Besides Jamari’s immediate family, these were the people that really mattered, the ones who knew him best.

 It was only right that he be mourned by them while they drifted on the ocean where Jamari belonged. One of the uncles had gone back to the scene and retrieved the spear at the bottom of the reef. Once the convoy was far enough that the town was barely visible in the distance, they tied Jamari’s possessions down with weights and let them drift down to the depths.

 his spear, the first fishing pole that he’d gotten for his birthday when he was 5 years old, and a pair of flippers he just bought with his pocket money a month before, but never got a chance to grow into. The uncles lost their favorite student. A mother lost her son, and a father had to witness the most harrowing thing a parent can, the mutilated remains of his boy.

 A boy who lived and died by the waters he was born to explore, the very waters that called Jamari toward his final affliction. Colleen and Mike Manfor were high school sweethearts. Literally, they met in senior year in South Dakota. And even as a teenager, Colleen was already an experienced diver. She was the one that introduced Mike to the sport.

 And to his astonishment, diving was just as enigmatic and addictive as the pretty girl he’d asked out for a milkshake. After school and the beginnings of navigating young life, they opened a diving shop in Michigan where they sold and rented out goggles, oxygen tanks, and all the apparel needed for serious and novice divers to get what they needed.

 In Colleen’s 68 years on this earth, she’d completed no less than 1,000 dives in her lifetime. It’s not just that she had more hours in the waters than most professional divers. Colleen was also highly experienced in just about every body of water, every set of conditions, be that weather or underwater currents. and she was in better shape than any of us could dream of being.

 They raised two kids, Kathleen and Robert, with the same passions for the water that they had. They saved every penny they made, keeping their lifestyles pretty humble so that they could afford to make as many international trips as possible solely for the purpose of diving in as many reefs, caves, and historical sites as they could in a lifetime.

 The Caribbean, the Red Sea, the Galapagos Islands, Bikini Atoll, they’d been on dozens of trips. And this trip taken in September of 2024 was no different. This week it was Indonesia. And like everything else they did, this was going to be epic. A whole seven-week diving tour of all of the best spots that the world’s largest arctopgo country had to offer.

 With them were six of their closest friends, along with a personal tour and diving guide to accompany them. Two of their friends were a married couple, Rick and Kim Sass, whom they connected with years ago because they too owned a diving shop. Rick and Colleen had gone on hundreds of dives together.

 As a professional diver himself, Rick always maintained that there was no one he felt safer with under the water than Colleen. He always remarked that he’d learned more from her about keeping a level head than anyone in the field. It was what Colleen was known for, not losing her nerve or succumbing to hysteria, even when they were once stuck in a blind cave that had such thick silk clouds that they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces.

 Colleen’s calm resolve was what saved their lives that day. On the 26th, the group set off for Pu Lao Riyong, a tiny island off the beaten path. It has almost no tourism industry there at all, and it’s too small to house a permanent population, meaning that those coral reefs are virtually untouched and pristine. The first three dives from their vessel went great.

 It was all just as breathtakingly alive and colorful as they’d seen in pictures. The group had one more dive left before they planned on taking a short break, after which they’d continue on to a different location at around noon. Mike and Rick were ahead of Colleen with the diving master way at the front of the line heading toward another vibrant crop of sponges, fans, and darting fish.

 But just as the reef came into sight below them, the dive master spun around and signaled them up urgently. The group were very confused. Everything seemed so calm after all. Nevertheless, they dutifully followed him up anyway. What they didn’t realize was that there’d been a subtle but very telling change in the water.

 The dive master, who was farther down, was in a better position to notice. The fish suddenly darted down into the rocky crevices like they would if a predator was close. The water temperature dropped by an almost unnoticeable amount and there was a slight tug that the master felt dragging him down. Not hard enough to swim against.

 Not even close, but just enough force to notice. No one knew better that these small signs were indicators of something bigger to come, like the calm before a storm or how animals go quiet in the moments before the earthquake hits. and he just had a feeling in his gut that this was going to be an unusually strong underwater current. The creatures below had reacted with too much urgency for it to be anything else.

Colleen stayed in place as the master went by and the rest filed in behind him. She was making sure that everyone got up safely, planning on taking position in the rear like she always did. Beneath them, the sand was starting to swirl into cloudy puffs. The beginnings of the current had arrived just like the fish had indicated it would.

 The dive master got out first, hopped on the boat, and started helping the rest in. Rick and Mike both felt the first wave of the current buff against them before they surfaced, just hard enough to make them realize why their guide was in such a hurry to get out. When the dive master looked down, he could already see Colleen under the crystal clearar blue.

 He even stretched out his hand in preparation for when she’d break the surface in less than 5 seconds. And then Colleen, still looking up at his hands through her goggles, was whipped out of sight. All the guide saw was a blur of brown hair being swept away in a flash. And even the boat rocked with the sudden whoosh of power.

One moment she was there and the next Colleen was just gone. Mike was beside himself and the group had to physically hold him down to keep him from going in after his wife before he got swept away too. Colleen still had half a tank of air. Chances were high that she’d surface in the near vicinity perfectly calm and safe like she always did.

 The question was just how far the current would take her. But their assurance was soon shattered when several fishing vessels and their own boat failed to locate her. The Coast Guard was called in and before darkness settled, there were two helicopters in the air. But there was no sign of Colleen or any of her diving apparel.

 In the eight days that they searched, the water just got worse and worse. The current that took Colleen was just the precursor for an outofse storm that came from nowhere. Two more days after that, a fisherman 75 mi away made a grizzly discovery. He pulled up his net containing an 8-ft tiger shark. Normally, he’d have released the animal back into the water without a second thought, but it looked unusual. It was moving too sluggishly.

Its belly was grotesqually distended, and something just told him to have a look inside. Unfortunately for that poor fisherman, an entire human arm flopped out onto his boat’s deck when he cut the beast open. It was still encased in the sleeve of a wet suit and completely intact from the shoulder down.

 The flap of wet suit was so large that it had caused a pretty serious blockage in the animals intestine that it probably would have died from the blockage within the next 24 hours anyway. It was confirmed to be Colleen’s remains by matching the fingerprints on the limb. But here’s where things get strange.

 The strong acidic reaction within any shark species digestive tract is so intense that there wouldn’t have been any skin left on the arm after a single day of consuming it, let alone fingerprints still being intact. meaning that Colleen had died on the day that the current dragged her off.

 And she’d been floating around out there for nearly 2 weeks. And the shark just happened to come across her remains and probably several other scavengers, too. And the truth of the matter is that any number of things could have killed Colleen if the current held her under for more than 40 minutes. Her tank would have run empty.

 Or more likely, Colleen took a few gulps of oxygen too fast as the water pummeled her around at speeds that cars usually travel at. This would have led to a case of oxygen toxicity. If the hyperoxia didn’t kill her, then its effects could have stressed her body out so much that she had a massive stroke or a heart attack.

 Mike, Rick, and Kim refused to believe this. They all remained staunch believers that Colleen was much too experienced to fall prey to breathing too rapidly or to allow a little thing like a current to stress her out to the point of heart failure. But they weren’t in the crossfire of a stream going at 12 m an hour with unimaginable pressure coming in from all sides that forces the body downward.

 Imagine being inside an elevator on the 15th floor and the cables suddenly get cut. The ocean doesn’t just carry you away, it sucks you down as it flows. Unfortunately, you have to accept that she was nearly 70 years old and no matter how experienced, how fit, or how outstanding her track record was. There’s only so much that the human body can take.

 At her age, Colleen didn’t stand a chance against the biggest storm the island had seen all season. Unfortunately for Indonesia, it doesn’t matter how she died since her remains were found inside a shark. This technically needs to be added to Indonesia’s statistical data on shark interactions between humans. This is a terrible blow for them.

 The nation’s been keeping detailed records since the early 1700s. In that time, there have only been 23 attacks by sharks, resulting in only 15 fatalities in roughly 300 years. A remarkably low amount by world standards. But at the end of the day, Colleen spent 10 days of drift. eventually causing her wets suit and her body to be torn to shreds by more than just the current.

 So, if we really need to designate a cause of death, then it must have been the ocean’s final affliction. In July 1994, terror was about to grip the South African community. Unbeknown to swimmers and surfers, sharks had been attracted to South Africa’s coastlines in recent weeks. They had followed the abundant salmon and seals in the area as well as the recent cving of southern Wright and humpback whales.

 On Saturday, July 9th, 1994, two friends in their 20s, Bruce Corby and Andrew Carter, decided it was a great day to hit the waves on their surfboards. They headed to one of the best surfing spots in the Eastern Cape, Nahon Reef, home to some international surf competitions. As the two friends took their boards off the roof of their car, they looked out to the sea.

 From the clear blue sky, the winter sun was glistening on the water’s surface. The air temperature was about 24° C. The waves were nearing 2 m high with a gentle breeze in the air. They were lovely surfing conditions and a few surfers were already riding the waves. Bruce and Andrew strapped their leashes to their ankles and paddled out to about 200 m from the shore.

 Just beyond the breakers, the water was 8 to 12 ft deep over a submerged reef. They were enjoying the time together, feeling the thrill as they caught wave after wave. Andrew was a champion surfer, winning both South African and European titles. After the two had been surfing for about half an hour, Andrew suddenly felt a massive bang from behind him.

 Before turning his head to look, Andrew knew it was a shark. As he wheeled his head around, he came face to face with a 12-t great white shark. An indescribable terror gripped him. He saw the shark’s enormous jaws clamp around his leg, stripping flesh from bone in one bite. It was like nothing he had ever felt before.

 Initially, as the adrenaline was pumping, he felt no pain, only an immense crushing feeling as the shark closed its jaws around his entire leg. He yelled, letting out an earpiercing scream whilst desperately trying to fight the shark off. The sea turned red, and Andrew thought this was the end. Another surfer who was nearby saw the drama unfolding and in a mad panic, he left Andrew and paddled to shore in a desperate attempt to escape himself.

 As the shark continued its ferocious attack, Andrew held on to his surfboard with all his might, refusing to be taken underwater. Momentarily, the shark loosened its grip and Andrew slid off the board. As the shark came for him again, Andrew shoved the board into the shark’s mouth. It chomped down on the surfboard, thrashing its enormous head from side to side as it did so.

 Andrew desperately paddled two or three strokes away, but the shore was a long way away. He knew he couldn’t outswim the shark. The beach was 200 yd out of reach. He would either bleed out before making it or would be taken by the shark. He glanced backwards and saw the enormous beast let go of the board and submerged below the surface.

 He knew it was coming after him. Bravely, he scrambled back to his board and climbed on. Seeing the commotion in the water, another surfer, John Bourne, quickly paddled over to Andrew. Amidst the sea of red, he saw an approaching wave and knew that this was Andrew’s only chance. He shouted at Andrew to ride the wave in. Miraculously, the 6-ft wave carried Andrew away from the jaws of the shark.

He had caught the luckiest wave of his life. His leg was barely hanging on, and he willed the wave to push him faster and faster to safety. He dared not look back, fearing that the shark was trailing him. Mercifully, he made it to the shore. He screamed for help. Two girls who were sunbathing ran over to him, dragging him onto the sand.

 They laid him down, ripping off one of their tops to make a tourniquet around his leg. The shark’s bite had almost taken his entire leg from hip to foot. It was hanging on by a few inches of flesh. His vision became blurred and then the lights went off. Andrew heard muffled voices as the life slipped from him.

 As he readied himself for death to consume him, Andrew felt calm and at peace with himself. He thought of his life well-lived, of his friends, of his family. But paramedics soon arrived at the scene and rushed him off to the hospital, saving his life. Andrew’s ordeal was far from over, but at least he was out of the water.

 The shark, however, hadn’t finished yet. Moments after attacking Andrew, it leapt out of the water. The 12-oot giant had turned its attention to Andrew’s friend, Bruce. He cried out as it grabbed hold of his leg. Viciously, it shook him, tearing him from his surfboard. As he was slammed into the water, the air was knocked from his lungs, fighting for the surface.

 Bruce felt the full force of the shark’s grip on his leg. The pressure was immense, and then head gave way. The shark severed Bruce’s right leg completely off just above the knee. This freed Bruce who was then able to swim for the surface. Reaching the sunlight, Bruce gasped for air. The shark continued its attack, biting frantically at his surfboard.

 Another surfer arrived on the scene. As Bruce was thrashing about in his own blood, he tried to get Bruce onto his board, but in a panic, he couldn’t. Bleeding profusely, Bruce scrambled back onto his own board and made a frenzied swim toward shore. With the help of a wave, he body boarded towards the jagged rocks. He cried out, “My leg’s gone. I’ve just lost my leg.

” Other surfers in the area came to his aid and pulled him from the surf. Using another surfboard as a stretcher, they carried Bruce over the rocks to the car park. Bruce had been conscious up until then. Laying down in the car park, he lost consciousness due to the massive blood loss.

 Within 2 minutes of making it to shore, Bruce had stopped breathing. Paramedics on the scene managed to revive him and stabilize him before taking him to the nearby hospital. Tragically, Bruce never regained consciousness and died the next day at just 22 years old. Shortly after the attack, Andrew moved to the UK for several months restit.

 He has been continually haunted by the tragic memories of that day. The doctors said he may never walk again. But not only is Andrew back walking, he’s also surfing off Britain’s southwest coast. He has kept the surfboard to this day. Blood still smeared on its surface and a huge bite mark taken out of one side.

 It is a reminder to him of how lucky he has been. A reminder that no matter how excellent we may be at surfing or swimming, when it comes to sharks, we can still be considered prey. There have been a number of reports involving shark attacks within minutes of each other. It seems this shark was angry at its unsuccessful attack on Andrew, and so its attack on Bruce had been more brutal and more persistent.

 People talk of mistaken identity when it comes to shark attacks, and it’s often reported that sharks will swim away after the initial bite upon realizing a human since it isn’t their usual prey. But this time, it was different. This time, the shark came back for more, bringing Bruce Corby to his unfortunate final affliction.

[Applause] Jade Kahukor Dixon was from the Chadam Islands, a remote archipilago about 850 kilometers east of New Zealand’s South Island. In the small community around Weangi where he lived, Jade was a well-known face. In a place where there are only about 1,000 permanent residents, you can bet that every child is raised by the village.

 And he, just like every Chatham native, had plenty of family members that were not related by blood, but bound together by community. The Mayori people are deeply rooted to the ocean, and none was a better example of that devotion to the sea than Jade. The 24year-old, like many others from the islands, was a prolific diver.

 He specialized in abalone and sea urchin diving, probably the two most valuable edible creatures that can be collected from the reefs and seabed boulders. Back when he finished school, Jade’s prowess on the rugby field led to a good run playing club rugby for a while, and he could have potentially made a career of it if he wanted to.

 But he loved the ocean more and he knew that that was eventually where he’d spend his time making a living at the end of the day. So his love for rugby and chess took a backseat to earning a living from his diving expeditions. Not that he’d say no to a game of rugby on a rare day off, mind you.

 He just couldn’t resist a good scrum when the opportunity arose. This turned out to be a wise decision. Soon he was doing so well that he formed his own company, Nomad Diving Limited, at just 23 years old. Together with other young divers, he was out on the water every day of the week except for Sundays. Because making good money did not excuse him from going to church.

 And Jade’s mother would pull his ear if he ever missed Sunday service and dinner with the family. It didn’t matter that he was an adult that towered over her. Jade Kahukor Dixon would always remain his mother’s strapping boy. And good boy spent at least one day a week with her parents.

 Jade knew the dangers of the ocean better than anyone. And not just because he’d grown up on the waters. Jade had had his own near-death experience with a great white shark just two years before. While out diving with a group of friends, all participants of the sea urchin and abalone trade themselves. He came face tof face with a 16 ft specimen at the bottom of the reef.

 He wiggled into a crevice between the rocky bottom to hide and it worked. The shark swam right past him. Only when Jay tried to swim up, he found that his foot was stuck in the thin slit he didn’t in. Luckily, the team of divers were wellcoordinated, and each diver was given a certain amount of time beneath the water.

 If someone didn’t return in their allotted time, one of the group was sent out to look for the missing diver. When Jade’s time was 6 minutes over what it should have been, a friend went down to find him, and he got there just in time, too. Jade’s scuba tank was nearly empty by the time they got to the surface.

 But at least this should give you a good idea of how wellorganized the divers on New Zealand’s islands are. These guys aren’t out there taking chances, and Jade wouldn’t have founded his own enterprise without applying those same safety precautions to his own operation. On Tuesday, November 19th, 2024, his company had just celebrated 5 months of successful sales and Jade’s 24th birthday.

 He and five other men set out to a new outcrop. They chose a new diving spot every few days so that they didn’t deplete any one area by over fishing there for too long. Today, they were specifically hunting for sea urchins. Spring was almost over, and after spring, the urchin lose their richness and deep flavor. Not that they’d avoid abalone or other shellfish if they could find it, but the urchin was their main objective.

 The early morning provided meager collections. The water was unusually cloudy for this time of year, thanks to unexpected currents that threw up the sand and silt, so they decided to stay out a little longer that day. By noon, their vision was even worse. But unless there was a storm, nothing was going to stop them from bringing in at least something worthwhile.

 While three men stayed topside, Jade and two others went down for another dive. Jade finally found a decent crop of crayfish. It wasn’t exactly what they’d come for, but their bright orange scuttling bodies stood out in the murky water, making them easier to find than usual. Unfortunately, they’re harder to catch because crayfish scurry into crevices and hollows.

 This is the kind of job that requires a great deal of attention and timing. So Jade just wasn’t watching his back like he normally would have, and his two diving buddies were several yards away, so they wouldn’t have seen the 10-ft great white sneaking closer to Jade’s back, especially not with the gray water to camouflage its equally gray body so effectively.

 The animal passed just 6 ft behind him, first coming in close to investigate this strange creature in its hunting grounds. Jade, up to his elbow in a cavity, didn’t notice that he was being observed at all. The shark doubled back, still unsure of whether or not Jade was edible. So, it decided to test this creature first.

 It whizzed past, taking a bite out of Jade’s right thigh as it went. Jade felt a sudden hot pain radiating from his thigh and an almighty yank that nearly broke the arm that was still stuck inside the fissure. Its teeth had shorn through the wets suit, taking a neat chunk out of Jade’s leg. Instantly, the gray waters were saturated with blood.

 Jade could see how bad the damage to his leg was, but he felt the fire emanating from it, and he could tell by the stained water that he was bleeding profusely. Jade knew that the damage was severe. He needed to get up while there was still strength left in him to swim. Only that proved impossible. That wrench that nearly broke his arm had shoved his arm so firmly into that narrow slit that it was now stuck.

 And with every desperate pull, Jade became more and more wedged in, and the stream from his leg was slowly weakening him as he struggled. Realizing that he could cause even more damage if he panicked, he forced himself to be calm and collected, or his racing heart would have exacerbated the bleeding and caused oxygen toxicity from his tank.

 On top of everything else, Jade knew that if he just bared the pain and waited patiently, his buddies up top would eventually come down for him. He just needed to pray that the predator didn’t come back to finish him off. His assumptions were proven true. Not only had the shark, for some reason, not bothered to come back, but the other two divers surfaced without him, and his time had run out, alerting those on the boat that something was wrong.

 It took them just minutes to come down to look for him. The man found Jade by following the cloud of deep red that ballooned around him. Getting Jade loose with an extra set of hands, not weakened by blood loss, was surprisingly fast, but getting Jade back up was a different matter altogether. He was using all of his remaining reserves to keep his mouthpiece in and to remain as calm as possible.

 Given his dire condition, Jade was managing astonishingly well. He was weak, unable to swim, and almost completely limp, requiring his rescuer to do all the work to get him to the surface. When they got him back onto the boat, he was still conscious. But Jade knew that his time was short. He had just lost too much blood in the time he was stuck down there.

 He made sure to tell his friends his last messages of love to his family, and he asked them to pray with him while they sped off to Watangi Wararf, where paramedics already waited after they’d radioed in. Halfway through the prayer, Jade slipped out of consciousness, and 20 minutes later, they landed at the warf.

 He was taken to Chadam Island’s health center where medical professionals scrambled to save his life. The wound was not as large as usual great white bites normally are, but the time spent at the bottom of the ocean and the half an hour it took them to reach the wararf was just too long. Had he been delivered just 10 minutes earlier, Jade would have lived to dive another day.

 But as we all know, that was not the case. Jade breathed his last just an hour after he was hooked on to bags of plasma and donated blood. Doctors called off the aircraft that was on its way to transport Jade to the main medical center 800 km away. At least this way, Jade could live, die, and be buried on his home soil, surrounded by his tribesmen, his parents, siblings, and every one of the 1,000 inhabitants in the surrounding area.

 That following weekend, just about every island in the vicinity stood eerily quiet and empty. Every able-bodied person had manned their vessels and made the trip over to Watanji to attend the funeral. They laid his rugby jersey on his coffin, placed a chest piece and an abalone shell next to him, and he was laid to rest with all of the Mayori customs that are fitting to a member of his people.

 He was strong and brave during life, and he was buried with the respect that a young man of his stature deserves to be laid to rest with. Jade Kahukor Dixon will forever be remembered by the outstanding life he lived and not by his untimely, brutal final affliction. Janluca De Joya was an Italian official with the European External Action Service, a diplomatic service located in every European country.

 Janluca’s deployment was situated in France. Not that he spent all of his time there, not by a long shot. The great thing about Gianluca’s job was that it sent him all over Europe, and he was blessed enough that his wife and son usually traveled with him. That was the perfect job for a guy like him.

 He and his little family threw themselves into every new country’s national sport, hiking location, or whatever else was available that involved some kind of physical activity. He was an especially prolific diver and even considered going into a professional capacity when he was younger. You never think it by looking at him, but Gian Luca was 48 years old.

He looked better than men a fraction of his age. It wasn’t just his Italian genes that were coming through. It was all that physical activity that he squeezed into every waking moment of his life. In December of 2024, he found himself in a different country yet again. Only this time, it wasn’t to strengthen international ties.

 The DeJoya family were here to celebrate Gian Luca’s 48th birthday. And he chosen Egypt as their destination. Specifically, the coastal village of Marseilles Alm, also known as the Egyptian Maldives. Most of us think of pyramids, camels, and desert expanses when we think of Egypt. completely forgetting that the country has some of the most breathtaking sandy beaches and unusual oceanic life just waiting to be discovered by divers in the reefs.

Honestly, their resorts, swimming spots, and outstanding catamaran rides are criminally underrated. Jean Luca chose this place for three reasons. First, he’d already been all over Europe, so he wanted some new scenery. Secondly, it was utterly gorgeous and there was enough to interest the whole family. And most important of all, Marseilles Alam has dung, the majestic and gentle sea cows.

 Xian Luca had seen all sorts of sea creatures in his life. But these slow-moving mammals had been on his bucket list since he picked up diving in his late teens. And he wasn’t leaving until he got to see at least one of them. But first, the family had to arrive, settle in, and celebrate his birthday on the 21st, which went by fantastically.

 During their celebration dinner, the sociable man even made a new friend, a fellow Italian, Jeppe Fapani, and also a diving enthusiast who’d come to see the dungangs, sea turtles, and various dolphin species. Both of them had placed an order to rent the appropriate scuba gear. And it just so happened that they’d booked their dive with the same company and would be going out together in the same group on the 27th.

 Over dinner, they decided that the two of them, since they still had 5 days to kill before their epic dive, would spend the next few days snorkeling. It would be perfect. The women and children could explore all of the entertainments that the resort had to offer. While the two of them might just get lucky enough to see their personal mamillion attraction long before the big dive.

 If 5 days sounds like an inordinate amount of time to spend diving, it really isn’t. The sheer amount of life down in those colorful reefs is nothing short of astounding. Moray eels, stonefish, reef sharks, turtles, rays, groupers, and let’s not forget the garden landscapes of soft corals and towering pinnacles.

The new buddies started out early on the 22nd, ticking off their list of amazing finds. Unfortunately, their rented scuba gear hadn’t yet arrived, so they settled for some good old-fashioned snorkeling. By noon, they’d spotted two species of ray, more fish than they could count, and a few smaller white-tipped reef sharks that were no longer than their forearms.

 They stopped for a spot of lunch with their wives and decided to try out the kite surfing opportunities the next day. But for now, they still had one heck of a long stretch of rock gardens to explore. They went back and soon they were out beyond the immediate bathing area about 50 meters away from the beach line. It wasn’t like they intentionally moved out of the safe bounds of the beach.

 They just kept following a line of rock and coral and sort of allowed their fins to carry them into deeper waters without even realizing it. And as we all know, with bigger waters come bigger predators. For the Italian buddies, that predator was a 16- ft tiger shark that had been skimming the beach all morning, waiting for one of the delectable humans to drift out away from the pack.

 Gianluca just happened to be the closest to the hunter. So, that’s the one it chose. The next time he dove down to have a second look at an octopus hiding under a rock, it struck. Gian Luca saw the gray torpedo gunning at him from below. The waters there are just too clear to hide anything.

 The bubbles exploding from his mouth in a silent scream reached the surface before G and Luca did. The animal clamped its jaws around his hip and waist, barreling them both up to the surface. Jeppe, just yards away, heard a strangled scream, saw a splash, and started swimming toward his new friend, assuming that he’d simply fallen ill or maybe swallowed a bit of brackish salt water.

 But then he saw the boiling red waters around Gian Luca. And then all hell broke loose. Jeppe didn’t stop to think. He just swam toward the mad breathing and screaming spot ahead of him. The crowd on the beach, including both men’s wives, saw everything. They hollered and yelled for help. Several running toward the dock where a few boats were tied.

 But before anyone, could so much as start an engine, Jeppe was already at Gian Luca’s side. He reached for the shark, willing to fight it with his bare hands, only to be met with razor sharp teeth that shredded his forearms and hands. Xian Luca was still alive, bleeding from who even knew how many wounds, barely keeping his head above water.

 There was no time to react to the pain. Jeppe went in again. This time, he punched at the leathery skin. Every inch he could reach was pummeled and pounded. To his surprise, the thing turned tail and fled. He grabbed his friend beneath the armpits, but to his horror, found that his hand reached into a cavity of torn sineu and slashed flesh.

 Xianluca’s arm was hanging by a thread, and he was losing blood fast. Before he could even get his bearings to figure out how to swim back with Gian Luca, weighing him down while somehow staunching the gaping wound where his shoulder used to be, Jeppe was yanked underwater. The beast had returned after all, and this time it grabbed Jeppe by his feet.

 Only the shark misjudged and grabbed both ankles at the same time. Jeppe reacted instinctively, kicking the animal in the roof of the mouth, dazing it momentarily. Then a small dinghy appeared next to them with two men on board, hauling them up before the boat even fully came to a stop. Even if the shark felt the need to come in for a third strike, its prey had suddenly disappeared from the surf.

 And in their place was a roaring engine that completely disoriented it even more. These pale creatures weren’t easy pickings after all. They kicked, punched, and came with engines that roared like dragons. Finally, it fled back to the deep. The dinghy was an ancient old thing. its engine coughing pathetically as the drivers forced it to give it everything it had left in it.

When they bumped into the sand, the engine was smoking, completely burned out. But it had done what it needed to do. It got Jeppi, bleeding from his shredded hands, arms, and lower legs, and Gian Luca, whose arm was nearly severed and with another gaping wound on his hip, where his intestines were poking out.

 There was absolute chaos on the sands. Their sons and wives were hysterical. People were scrambling and screaming, and there wasn’t another staff member in sight. Luckily, the two employees that manned the dinghy didn’t wait for the slow response from their superiors to give them clues about what to do. They simply pulled four of the strongest men aside, and together they carried Jeppe and Gian Luca through the resort heading toward their own personal vehicles.

 Apparently, someone had called an ambulance after all, because it pulled in just as they reached the parking lot. Gi Luca was declared deceased long before he reached the hospital. They tried, but after two hours, there was no other option than to call time of death and to sew him back up for the return journey home. Jeppe, on the other hand, was in worse condition than anyone expected for a man that had quite literally fought a 16 ft shark so fiercely that it fled in terror twice.

 His hands, forearms, and lower legs were in tatters. Stitching him back up took hundreds of sutures and a fair amount of donated blood to make up for the supply he’d lost. According to the doctors, he shouldn’t even have been conscious anymore, let alone raging out a slew of the post-p poetic Italian profanities when nurses wouldn’t let his wife through to see him.

 Despite the astounding amount of punctures and torn muscle, Jeppe is expected to make a full recovery. He might not have full dexterity of his fingers, but he since regained the ability to hold a pencil. Jeppe would have happily given up both hands if it meant that Xi and Luca could have lived another day to see those dogongs he dreamed of seeing.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first, nor will it be the last incident of shark attacks in the Red Sea. Egypt’s been seeing an uptick in attacks consistently for the past decade. If someone doesn’t do something about the matter soon, then it won’t be long before the predators of the Red Sea delivers another victim to their final affliction.

[Applause] Muhammad Zaden was a special young man born in the Maldives and having grown up on the small island of Arun Gufaru in the Raatoll, he expected to enter into construction just like his father. But at 19 years old, just as he started to apprentice at the same company, his father became chronically ill.

 Coned to his bad, Mr. Zaden could no longer support his wife and four children. Muhammad and his mother both worked to support the family, but Muhammad soon realized that this wasn’t enough to keep his siblings fed in school and to keep up with the mounting medical bills. So, he signed up to join the military at 20 years old.

 The pay was better and it came with the additional benefit of better medical care, not just for Muhammad, but also for his extended family once he started to climb up the ranks. Within 3 years, he reached the rank of Lance Corporal. By the age of 24, he was a year into working toward becoming a corporal, and things were going much better for his family back home.

 Sure, he didn’t go to visit as often as he’d like to, but his father was receiving better medical care. One of his brothers had graduated high school, and the two younger ones were well on their way to do the same, too. To his great surprise, Muhammad just happened to find himself exactly in the profession he was meant to be in. Even though the military had been a desperate attempt to improve the lives of his family, it ended up being the perfect fit.

 He absolutely thrived in the structured environment and took on every new challenge with great pride. His superiors all agreed that Muhammad had all of the tools and character needed to make service a lifelong wellrespected career. But first, Lance Corporal Zaden needed to complete some specialized training to achieve corporal status.

 And some of that training included marine-based training. For the past few months, they were drilled on weapons and boat handling in aquatic environments, long-term survival and evasion at sea, handtohand combat and diving operations, not to mention so much physical endurance and conditioning exercises that Muhammad couldn’t believe basic training had felt so hard back in his cadet days.

 This was a brutal course and he was loving every second of pushing his body to the limit. On June the 2nd, 2024, the morning started like any other. They were in the water before the sun rose to warm up. moved on to weapons training in the shallows and an hour before noon they were sent out to swim one mile out to sea, turn around at the flotation marker and swim the mile back.

The swim was done while they were fitted with fins and basic gear to weigh them down. Naturally, there were two motorboats following them just in case any of the 20 men ran into trouble, but by now the boats were just command following standard safety procedure. This group of trainees were so accustomed to this regime that they hadn’t had any issues at all for the past few weeks.

 Muhammad was in the middle of the pack, conserving his energy until they were a few yards away from reaching the shore. He was planning on turning the dial up to 11 close to the end so that he could overtake the ones who tired themselves out too early. Because what’s life without a little friendly competition among comrades? Honestly, the 13-ft tiger shark that had been watching them since they kicked off from the beach could have targeted any of the 20 men in the water.

 The only reason Muhammad stood out was because there was a sizable gap between the men in front and behind him. The rest of the line were moving in a pretty closely packed file. There just happened to be enough space on either side of him that the predator could single him out from the back.

 Muhammad was midstroke in a well practiced freestyle when the animal torpedoed into him. It grabbed him by the upper left thigh, dragging him through the water. Muhammad screamed in pain, alerting the nearest boat. The officers manning the craft sprang into action the second they saw Muhammad’s torso slice through the water like some macabre magic trick.

 His lower body was trapped inside the speeding animals jaws beneath the surface, leaving his upper body out in the open. The swimmers behind Muhammad were so engrossed in their task that they didn’t even realize what was happening. They swam straight through the ruby red stain that Muhammad’s blood left behind. Luckily, he was being pulled directly toward the life raft that started its engine and had begun to race toward Muhammad.

 The roar of the engine in the craft that was enormous compared to the shark was enough to force the beast to let go of Mohammad’s leg. Only about 6 seconds from the bite to the release had gone by, but the damage was already done. Muhammad would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean had the officers in the boat not been so close.

 One of them grabbed Muhammad by the armpits and hauled him bodily into the boat while they were speeding past him without even slowing down the engines. If the military teaches a man one thing, it’s to react with the utmost speed, focus, and precision when the situation demands it. And that’s exactly what they did. Muhammad couldn’t have asked for a faster extraction.

 They sounded off their horns as they raced to shore, finally alerting the swimmers to abort their task. The other bows circled the trainees as they made their way back to land to keep them safe. Their firearms pointed at the dark waters all the way to shore. By the time the swimmers reached the beach, Muhammad was already in route to the hospital.

 But the officers that grabbed him up knew that the situation was dire. If it weren’t for their medical field training, he’d have been dead in 2 minutes or less. Half of his thigh was completely ripped out, severing the femoral artery. The spray of blood that ejected into the air went several feet over their heads, pumping in tune with Muhammad’s heartbeat.

 One officer managed to pinch the exposed main artery closed with his thumb and forefinger just as they exited the boat. The craft’s bottom was so saturated with blood that you could no longer see the white painted enamel on the floor at all. The bloody pool slashed sickeningly as the boat rocked in the shallow waves.

 The team carefully loaded the wounded man onto a stretcher, careful to allow the officer to keep his fingers in place. If he let go, even for a moment, the vein would contract, causing it to get sucked deep into the muscle where no one could reach it anymore, and Muhammad would bleed out in seconds.

 The officer had been incredibly lucky to grab onto the vein. The chances of someone pinching it fast enough before it contracts is extremely rare. When they entered the army buggy, Mohammad was barely conscious. He’d stopped screaming long ago and was now altering between mumbling prayers and asking if his mother would be mad if he didn’t make it home for eyed celebrations.

 The officer continued to clamp that vein until his fingers cramped, never letting go all the way to the hospital. He held on to it as they wheeled the now unconscious Muhammad in through the front doors and kept his position into the surgical theater, too. Only when the surgeon placed a clamp behind his seized up fingers did the officer let go and allow a nurse to escort him from the room.

 Lers upon lers of oo positive blood was pumped into him and doctors even managed to stabilize him remarkably well considering he’d lost more than half the blood in his body and the fact that there was a chunk the size of a dinner plate out of his leg. His vitals started to drop the moment he was wheeled out of the operating room despite the cocktail of medicinal aid that they fed into his nearly collapsed veins.

 But the truth of the matter was that Muhammad was already brain dead by the time he was wheeled out of surgery. And his heart was so stressed that it was barely keeping up, even with all the stimulants it was getting. Eventually, it just gave out. That evening, just as his mother and two younger sisters arrived at his bedside, Muhammad breathed his last.

 It was almost like he’d been waiting just for them to arrive, to say goodbye. Lance Corporal Mohammad Zaden was declared dead at 8:40 p.m. that evening without regaining consciousness. Later that week, he was buried with full military honors on his native island of Unuaru, complete with several commanders and generals present to pay their respects, as well as a seven gun salute conducted by soldiers.

 Accidental deaths happen during military training all the time, and almost never is this enormous amount of respect and ceremony given to soldiers who did not die in battle. And it’s even more rare for the National Defense Force’s flag to be flown at half mast for 2 days. Muhammad was not just loved by his sisters, brother, and parents.

 He was respected and honored by his entire country for the stellar serviceman that he was going to become. Recognized for the immense tragedy that befell a bright young man with an even brighter future. In many ways, dying before your time with all of that potential ripped away from the world is the worst kind of final affliction.