Marine Biologist Recounts Having His Head in Shark's Jaws

Marine biologist Mauricio Hoyos is sticking up for the shark that bit him. The 48-year-old Mexican scientist was seriously injured while tagging sharks off Costa Rica's Pacific coast as part of a conservation project. After successfully attaching a tag to the dorsal fin of a female Galapagos shark, Hoyos suddenly found his entire head inside her jaws. "She turned sideways in my direction; it was really fast," he tells the New York Times. "It was wide open; my whole head was inside of her mouth in less than a second."

"I heard a cracking sound, but it was just pressure," he says. The shark broke off almost immediately, leaving his mask knocked loose, air hoses severed, and blood clouding his goggles. Despite losing air and vision, Hoyos managed a careful ascent to the surface, where his colleagues pulled him aboard and rushed him to medics. He says the shark reacted in surprise after his tag hit the base of its dorsal fin. "She was heading down and never saw me, and then she felt the puncture," he tells the Times. "It was a defensive bite. She wanted me to stay away from her personal space."

The bite left him with 27 injuries to his face and scalp—one for every tooth involved. He is awaiting jaw surgery. "If she wanted, she could have killed me," he says, adding: "She was scared also. It was not her fault." He says the incident felt like it was in slow motion. But my mind was very calm. I was thinking the whole time about what to do. Hoyos has spent three decades tagging everything from great whites to whale sharks, and this was his first bite. He is expected to make a full recovery. Hoyos was the chief scientist on the expedition for the One Ocean Worldwide Coalition, which includes the Fins Attached nonprofit.

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Colleagues describe Hoyos as an exceptional scientist dedicated to shark conservation, the Tico Times reports. "How he responded was probably a lot different from a normal diver," Fins Attached Director Alex Antoniou tells the Times. "He understands shark behavior."