KEKAHA — After surviving what turned out to be a traumatic outing in the water, Waimea resident Mitch Milan said Tuesday he feels fortunate to have been “spared.”
“When I close my eyes, I watch the board go away and I see the fin of the shark go down,” Milan said in Kekaha.
The 54-year-old survived a shark attack while surfing at Davidson’s surf break in Kekaha late Monday. While not sure of the species, Milan believes he was attacked by a tiger shark about eight to 10 feet long.
The last reported incident on Kauai was on April 14, according to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Aquatic Resources. Coincidentally, the attack also took place at Davidson’s, and was also caused by a tiger shark.
Milan said he’s been surfing for about 40 years, and has encountered sharks before.
“Where I grew up in Northern California, I’ve been chased out of the water by a giant great white,” he said. “I’ve had them swim between me and a friend. There would be a 24-foot great white swim right between us.”
Milan added: “I think any surfer would agree with this. We all wonder if it happens, what would I do? How would I react? If it happened to my friend or another person that I knew, would I go to his help or would I scream and go back to the beach? It surprised me. I acted really level-headed. Not like I would have expected.”
Milan suffered an injury to his hand that required 50 stitches. Also, his surfboard now shows the bite of the shark measuring about 14 inches across.
“It was just a mass of energy that went up against me. Like if you get a brand new knife and you accidentally cut yourself, and then it’s like you don’t feel the pain until you see there’s blood,” Milan said. “That was the deal. I didn’t feel this. I have a huge, huge gash on my hand. (It took) 50 stitches to close it. Blood’s everywhere, and I didn’t feel it.
“All of a sudden, I’m in the water and I’m going, ‘Oh, my God. That’s a shark,’” he continued. “I’m backpedalling and trying to get my board back from him because he had it in his mouth. It’s like, ‘What do you do?’”
Milan was surfing with his friend Gary Watkins, of Kekaha, around 6:30 p.m., and the attack happened when it started to get dark.
“You just don’t stay out until dark. That’s what they call ‘shark 30,’” Milan said. “Kind of at the end of the day, ‘beer 30.’ That would be shark 30. People say as the sun is going down, when it gets dark, that’s when the big fishies come out. I (didn’t) know if there was a lot of truth to that before last night, but I kind of believe it now.”
Watkins said he saw Milan being attacked and paddled to help him.
“We were just surfing, and I heard some unusual sounds. I look over about 40 feet away, and Mitch was fighting off this shark,” Watkins said. “He was backpedalling and kicking his way off it. It had his board in his mouth. The board was, kind of, tombstoning and moving erratic. I just paddled straight for him to try to help him fight the thing off.”
After escaping the shark’s grasp, Milan rode a wave back in. Watkins, too, rode a wave back in. But before he did, he stayed on his board while the shark swam nearby.
“When I got to him, he’d let go of the board. He (Milan) pulled the board with the leash to him, and a wave came though right then. He took off, and then I had to wait about another half a minute for the next wave to come,” Watkins said. “I just had to sit and watch the shark swimming next to me. It didn’t approach me, but it swooshed past me. It did some fast turns and it broke the water with its fin and its tail. Then a wave came to me, and I just bombed out of there. It was done.”
Soon after getting out of the water, Milan got his hand wrapped to stop the bleeding and they drove to Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital in Waimea.
“KVMH just hopped to, you know, got me all cleaned up, stitched up and all good,” Milan said. “But the adrenaline rush was insane.”
Both surfers said they’re lucky that the attack was not worse.
“Anything could have happened. When you get down to it, you can go through a multitude of scenarios,” Milan said. “Gary’s the guy that came over. The shark could have spun around and got him. It could have came back at me. You can overthink this to the point where you don’t want to be by the ocean. But the bottom line is, hey, angels were working overtime. It’s good to be alive, and don’t take it for granted. Life is a gift.”
Watkins added: “I used to be an EMT (emergency medical technician). I wasn’t really phased by the injury. It was pretty minor, really. I could see that he wasn’t mortally injured — nothing to really be concerned about. I was really just glad that we both got out of there unscathed, and nothing really happened that was too horrible.”
Milan, who’s also a musician, said he’ll be out of the water for at least a few weeks. And while he’s determined to paddle out as soon as possible, he knows it will be mentally challenging after going through the ordeal.
“It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be a hard horse to climb,” he said. “They say when you get bucked off, you get back on. I know I’ll get back on a surfboard, but I know it’s going to be hard work.”
