On September 22, a Sunday, 62-year-old surf instructor Charley Hajek was doing what he loves best: catching waves at New Smyrna Beach, the shark attack capital of the world.
“The waves were so good, it was so much fun. We were having such a good time,” said Hajek, who sports bleached-blonde hair and a perma-grin and goes by the nickname Gnarly Charley. He’s something of a local legend: he’s won 18 East Coast surf championships and runs a .
After about two hours on the water, Hajek decided it was time to come in and started paddling to shore.
“I got into knee-deep water and stepped off the board, like I’ve done a million times before,” he said. “And as soon as I did that, I felt something—like I’d stepped on a fish.”
Except it wasn’t a fish. It was a shark. Hajek immediately felt a sharp, almost electric pain shooting through his lower leg.
“It was like bam!” he said. “I felt it clamp down on me. It felt like my foot was in a light socket and it was this big shock.” Almost immediately, he knew he’d been bitten by a shark.
Panicked, he glanced down at the water, but he couldn’t see anything beneath the thin film of foam from the surf. The shark could be anywhere. Hajek leaped up onto his board and started paddling as fast as he could for the beach. Once he came ashore, he braced himself and inspected his leg—but there was no wound in sight.
“I thought, ‘What? Weird. Am I trippin’?’” he said in a phone interview with ϳԹ. But as soon as he took his first step on the beach and weighted the leg, the wound opened up. The shark had left a series of deep gashes. Hajek began quickly losing blood.
For a moment, he watched it stream down his ankle and into the sand. Then, unphased, Hajek rinsed the leg in the ocean, fashioned a tourniquet from his surfboard leash, and drove himself to the hospital for stitches.
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From the bite radius, doctors were able to estimate the size of the shark—likely four to five feet. That would be big enough to scare most people. But not Hajek.
“I see like five sharks a day every day I surf,” he said. “They’re harmless.”
Well, sort of. Counting Hajek, New Smyrna Beach has seen 20 shark bites this year (but no fatalities or amputations)—hence the affectionate nickname Shark Bite Capital of the World. Hajek himself has seen several kids get bitten and has pulled them out of the water.
Still, Hajek said, they’re just nibbles; no one has been in serious danger. That’s likely because the types of sharks that frequent New Smyrna Beach—black-tipped sharks, nurse sharks, bull sharks, spinner sharks, and lemon sharks—are fairly small and unlike Great Whites, don’t tend to be aggressive.
“Sharks are harmless. Well, until you step on one. Then you’re going to get lit up,” he said. Hajek bears the creature no ill will. Instead, he did what he always does when he meets a new shark: he named it.
“I see the same sharks all the time, and I give them all names,” he said. “This one I called Barney. Because he did a silly thing: he bit me!” (Barney, in addition to being the name of a very silly dinosaur, is also a name applied to ill-prepared surfers.)
Hajek is due to have his stitches removed on Tuesday. If he gets a green light from the doctor, he plans to get back on the board as soon as he can catch a wave—that same day if he is able.
When asked how he’s feeling, Hajek pouted.
“I’m butt-hurt,” he said. “Before this, the last day I hadn’t gone surfing was April 27.” Hajek has been tracking his surf days on paper calendars since 1982. The days he surfs get a big smiley face drawn on them. The days he doesn’t stay blank.
“I save all the calendars to prove it,” he said. “This was my longest streak ever—148 days. Now I’ve got to start over.”