Man miraculously survived great white shark attack by playing dead

A diver who survived a great white shark attack by playing dead was left with 18 tooth wounds across his chest.

Frank Logan was out at sea snail hunting with friends when a great white bit into his torso and dragged him 16 feet through the ocean.

The keen underwater diver, who was 25 at the time, was left with 18 separate tooth punctures across a 20 inch crescent across his middle body.

Frank was out with pals at Bodega Rock in California’s Sonoma County when the terrifying attack took place in 1968.

Kitted with a snorkel and black wetsuit, the young diver set about looking for sea snails and abalone with friends Floyd Blanchard and Bill Posten for 25 minutes when the underwater predator sunk its teeth into his body.

“I felt something come down on my legs like a giant vice and then a crushing pain in my back and chest,” he later told people.

The fearsome predator bit into Frank’s side and began shaking him violent, but what he done next saved his life.

Instead struggling against the beast, Frank played dead and let his body go limp.

As a result, the shark carried him 16 feet in the sea before releasing him from its dagger-like grip and swam away.

Frank’s pals dragged him out of the water and rushed him to a nearby hospital where he received more than 200 stitches to repair his gaping wounds.

Looking at the size of the bite marks left on Frank, experts deduced the shark was about 13 feet long.

Shark expert William McKeever said Frank’s close encounter was proof apex predators aren’t all that interested in human flesh as a tasty meal.

He wrote: “If hunger were the shark’s primary motivation for the attack, Logan would have made an easy meal.

“The ISAF (International Shark Attack File) database shows that sharks rarely feed on their victims.”

In his 2020 book Emperors of the Deep, McKeever said it was the sound of movement that draws curious sharks to humans at sea.

“One commonly held view is that a single drop of human blood will precipitate an attack. While it is true that sharks can detect small quantities of substances in the water, a few drops of blood will quickly dissipate in the ocean,” the author wrote.

“In cases where a shark victim was bleeding in the water and more than one shark was in the vicinity, the blood did not draw the other sharks.

“Because sharks are far more likely to home in on low-frequency sounds, such as the thrashing of a wounded fish, a human kicking wildly or paddling vigorously on a surfboard is far more likely to draw the attention of a shark than a few drops of blood are”

He added: “Even victims who were bleeding profusely, like Frank Logan, were not subsequently attacked after the initial bite: only 4percent of victims reported being attacked in such a frenzied fashion.”

Earlier this month, fisherman captured the moment a monster shark sank its teeth into the propeller of their boat and refused to let go.

Four fishermen were enjoying their annual angling trip in Coral Bay, Western Australia, when the fearsome three-meter creature took a liking to their vessel.

The bemused group unwittingly caught the predator on one of their lines.

They were forced to grapple with the beast for an hour before the bronze whaler shark emerged from the water and wrapped its jaws around the propeller at the back of the charter boat.

The giant shark kept its teeth locked on the propeller for five minutes as it attempted to eat it before finally giving up and swimming off.

This story originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced here with permission.