Surfer shows scars from shark biting his face in Florida

A South Carolina surfer has displayed the gruesome facial scars he got this week when a shark bit him in the waters off the coast of Florida — recalling the terrifying “crunch” as it crunched his face “like a bear trap.”

“It was the scariest thing I’ve probably ever been through in my life. I’ve been in bad car accidents. Nothing like this,” Mark Sumersett, 38, told WESH of the close encounter that took place when he came off his surfboard in waters off New Smyrna Beach just before 8 a.m. Tuesday.

“It was pressure, and I’ll tell you that pressure, it was like a crunch. I heard the crunch. It felt like a bear trap crunching on my face,” Sumersett, who lives in Charleston, said of the moment the shark’s teeth tore into his face.

The toothy creature quickly released him, he recalled, but not before taking a large chunk out of the right side of his face.

“I jumped on my board and paddled in. I thought that sucker was going to come back for me. I thought he was ‘cause I was bleeding so bad,” Sumersett said of his desperate escape.

He was taken to a hospital, but was released after receiving about 20 stitches to the gashes on his face.

Sumersett’s injury marks the seventh shark bite in Volusia County this year — and is the first face bite on record, WESH said.

Sumersett’s father shared a photo on Facebook of the doctors sewing up the grisly skin tears from the attack — one the surfer said he had a premonition about.

“I had a feeling. I had a feeling I was going to get bit yesterday. I really did. Honestly, I had intuition,” Sumersett, who came down to Florida to enjoy the waves from Hurricane Lee on Monday.

Even before the incident, he told WESH, he and other surfers saw a number of sharks in the area.

He now thinks the shark may have noticed the gold chain on his neck and mistaken him for food while trawling in the seven-foot zone of white water.

Despite the horror attack, the surfer maintained he’ll be back riding waves as soon as he can.

“Heck yeah, I’m going surfing again,” he said. 

“Because I love it. There’s nothing in the world that makes me feel better than surfing.”

Other surfboarders in the area expressed similar intentions not to let the fear of shark bites deter them from getting in the water.

“Nine out of 10 times, it’s because [the surfers] fall in the shallow water and spook the shark, and it’s a reaction bite. It’s not like the shark just comes after them,” longtime surfer Rob Robinson, who arrived at New Smyrna Beach shortly after the attack on Sumersett, told the outlet.

“They’re just critters looking for food, you know? Like me and you. And when you go in the water, you enter the food chain,” another surfer, Daniel Hanson, added.