03/23/2023 Adam Norton PILBARA, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

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Adam Norton: Man details 'freak' shark attack where he waited HOURS for help after being bitten twice

PILBARA, WESTERN AUSTRALIA: A man has described his ordeal after he was bitten twice by a shark and had to wait for hours for help on a remote island chain. Adam Norton described the shark attack as a "freak event," recalling how he was on a fishing trip with his brother and friends off Western Australia's Pilbara Coast on Thursday, March 23, when the incident took place.

It was evening when they pulled in close to the Montebello Islands, which are about 130 km from the WA mainland. "It was about 6pm - I was just cleaning the boat, heading back in the shore to grab some beers and head back out, and that's when I got bitten," Norton told radio 6PR Breakfast.

Adam Norton was bitten by a shark twice

Norton was first bitten in waist-high waters. However, the two-and-a-half or three-meter nurse or lemon shark returned to attack him again, biting his foot this time. "It was about waist deep, the first initial bite was just below the knee, I started to run, it came back around and got me again," Norton said. "Initially, the adrenaline got me up the beach, and then I didn't really feel anything."

"I could definitely see I wasn't in great shape the guys I was with are all emergency response trained, so they put a tourniquet on my leg and bandaged it - when you sit there for a bit you sort of start to panic but they kept me pretty calm," he added. About three hours later, a Santos oil and gas vessel picked Norton up.

"The sharks were still in the water, so we couldn't actually get back to the boat," Norton said. "They couldn't land a helicopter on the island, so they had to send a boat out." he was initially rushed to nearby Barrow Island, but later flown to a hospital for treatment for the injuries he sustained as a result of the attack.

'This incident was just kind of a freak event'

"I've got a pretty decent wound on the bottom of my foot," Norton told 6PR's Steve Mills and Karl Langdon after being released from the hospital. "The surgeon said to me you get worse injuries falling off a pushbike, so that made me feel good. In the northwest there's plenty of sharks from Exmouth upwards."

"When you're diving you never take any unnecessary risks for a fish, you're sort of always in as much control as you can be," he added. "But this incident was just kind of a freak event, really. Some people I spoke to in the game said it's pretty bizarre."

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