Man dragged to bottom of sea by great white in 'worst shark attack ever'

Unfortunately, a lot of shark attacks end in travesty, though the ones that do survive have an incredible tale to tell.

Rodney Fox is one of those people, after he was involved in a horrific shark attack off the coast of Australia in 1963.

In fact, the attack is considered to be one of the worst in history.

The attack happened while Rodney was defending his South Australian Spear Fishing title - something he had claimed the previous year.

While on Aldinga Beach, 30 miles south of Adelaide, Rodney was viciously attacked by a Great White Shark, subsequently sustaining a punctured diaphragm, torn lung and pierced shoulder blade alongside an exposed ribcage, spleen, stomach and abdomen.

The beast dragged the then 23-year-old underwater, with Rodney needing a whopping 462 stitches to survive the vicious attack.

Rodney, now in his 80s, has recalled the attack in various interviews over the years.

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Speaking to the publisher McSweeney's, Rodney described the brutal attack many years on.

He said: "This huge thump hit me in the chest so hard that immediately I thought it was a train.

"Then I thought, 'No I’m underwater'. It was such a big thump, and it knocked the gun out of my hand, the mask off my face, and I was just hurled through the water faster than I could swim.

"'What can I do to get out of its mouth'? Its eyes were probably the most vulnerable thing. My arms were over the top of it, so I gouged its head, and it seemed to stop."

Chillingly, Rodney described the feeling of looking down to see the shark's mouth coming up from underneath as he was dragged under the water.

Even more worryingly, Rodney was looking down to see a cloud of his own blood.

Instagram/@rodneyfoxsharkexpeditions

"I’m out of breath and my chest is bleeding. And so I thought, 'I’m going to drown'.

"Looking down through the blood-red water, which is my blood, and this great big head coming up with its mouth wide open — is the scariest one in my whole memory, because I had nothing to protect myself with," he said.

"I thought, 'What can I do, What can I do?' And I kicked at the head as hard as I could as it came up to bite me, its mouth wide open. I kicked at it, thinking that’s the only thing I’ve got. But everything underwater is twenty percent further away, and so I just touched it with the fin, and not smashed it as I expected to.

"Then it swam up and swallowed the fish float I was towing behind me, a buoy, with a piece of wire with two small fish, because I’d weighed in most of them and I was on my way up. It swallowed that whole and did a circle, tightened the rope to my belt — it must’ve thought something was wrong, and it took off."

Rodney added that when he was pulled out the water and taken to hospital, staff 'had no idea at first about what to do and how to do it'.

"I remember laying in the hospital, panting, just a little bit, because every time I fell asleep I imagined stretching my lungs, the crunch and creak, and all those bones and everything."

Miraculously, despite his horrific injuries, he pulled through.

Nowadays, Rodney is focused on helping others have life-changing water experiences, doing so with Rodney Fox expeditions which is run by his son Andrew.