Anniversary of a Shark Attack
Common Bull Shark
Eight years after the fact, Marin Melton doesn’t remember much about the day that forever altered her life. She recalls bits and pieces of that time - people screaming, her being in the hospital for a long time – but she doesn’t remember the specific event. She doesn’t remember the actual attack that led to what would lead to a lifetime of change. Her mother Jenni Melton does.
All too well.
It was June 15, 2016. The family was vacationing on the coast in Galveston. They were spending the evening on Pirates Beach. It was around 5:30. Six-year-old Marin and her father Matthew were just a few feet offshore in shallow water. Marin was in a ring float. Jenni was on the beach. Marin suddenly screamed. Matthew looked to his daughter to see the white underbelly of a three-to-four-foot shark rolling next to his daughter. He grabbed his daughter and lifted her from the water.
Jenni heard the scream from on shore. “I thought she [Marin] got stung by a jellyfish, so I was taking a towel into the water. I don't know why I thought that would help,” Jenni told me during a phone interview two days before the eight-year anniversary of the attack. “But then when Matt picked her up and I saw her foot and her leg, I turned around and ran out and started yelling, ‘Call 911, call 911.’ Her leg looked like a mauling…it looked like she was mauled. It was like leg, bone, foot." Marin vaguely recalls, “I didn't really know what was happening. Just knew it kind of hurt a lot.”
Authorities believe what mauled Marin was most likely a bull shark. According to the National Wildlife Federation, “Bull sharks are often considered to be the most dangerous sharks to humans because of their aggressive tendencies.” The species’ diet consists of fish, other sharks, turtles, birds, and both aquatic and terrestrial mammals. Bull sharks are ambush hunters and prefer murky waters (such as the type Marin was in on that fateful day) where it is harder for prey to see the attack coming. The species often utilize the “bump-and-bite technique” to attack their prey. After the first initial contact with prey, the shark continues to bite and tackle prey until the prey is unable to flee. In a pound for pound comparison, bull sharks have the most powerful bites of all shark species.
One of the persons who heard Jenni’s plea for help was Oncology Hospice Nurse Allie Curry who was running on the beach. She saw Marin being carried from the water and immediately sprang into action. Jenni says, “Allie started triaging and trying to tie a tourniquet and she used a phone cord, my phone cord, but that did not work, because it's a phone cord. And then I think they used something else. And then finally they used a dog leash.”
An ambulance arrived and quickly transported Marin to University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Jenni says, “UTMB is like a level one trauma hospital. So, if you're going to get bit by a shark, that's the perfect place for it to happen because they were used to dealing with trauma and they hadn't seen a shark attack in very, very long time. So, they were just kind inventing the wheel, reinventing the wheel, really.”
Marin Melton around the time of the attack.
This reinventing the wheel took several weeks, numerous surgeries, and nearly a half million dollars in cost. “Marin had two or three operations to clean the wound out, the first couple of days. And then she had a 14-and-a-half-hour surgery, maybe longer. But she had a really, really, really long surgery where they reattached the five snapped tendons. She had five snapped tendons and then they took her lat muscle from her back and used that as soft tissue. And they did, it was called a free flap skin graft, so they had to do a 360-degree graft on her leg. And then they took skin from her thigh to wrap around the muscle to provide soft tissue that she didn't have anymore.”
Today, Marin is a normal 14-year-old girl. Her leg is a patchwork of scars and for this reason she doesn’t often wear shorts or miniskirts. Her gait isn’t telling of a past accident, and she can be as athletic as she wants to be. And while she says, “I just don't like the ocean” she has no problem with sharks despite that attack so many years ago.
“They're interesting,” Marin assures me.
This piece first appeared in the Fredericksburg Standard.
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