Man bitten after falling into shark-infested waters thanks South Florida surgeons who saved his leg
Marlin Wakeman slipped and fell into shark-infested waters in the Bahamas about two weeks ago, suffering a severe bite. On Thursday he told his story, leaning on crutches next to his parents at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, where surgeons had treated him the day after doctors in the Bahamas stopped the bleeding.
WEST PALM BEACH — For the week leading up to that day in April, Marlin Wakeman and his friends had joked about what would happen if one of them fell into the shark-infested waters at the Bahamas marina. At any given moment, he said, there were easily 20 sharks waiting, trained to respond to any splash that might mean food, so many that “you can walk on their heads.”
So it was almost as if the group had willed it into existence when, one day, Wakeman was preparing to jump the three feet from the dock onto the “Bucket List,” the boat where he intended to take a nap, and found himself slipping off instead, into the water, with a splash.
“I pretty much knew what was going to happen,” the 24-year-old Stuart resident told reporters Thursday in the same nonchalant tone he used when recounting his story. “And when he bit me, I knew what was going on. There wasn’t a second, like a doubt in my mind, what it was, what was happening.”
On Thursday, about two weeks after the bite, Wakeman leaned on crutches next to his parents at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, where surgeons had treated his bite the day after doctors in the Bahamas stopped the bleeding. The 7-foot shark had bitten through his kneecap; another had grazed his shoulder. Both wounds required stitches. He could have been infected if the wounds were not cleaned properly, but thankfully, one of the surgeons who treated him was Dr. Robert Borrego, a shark bite expert who previously pioneered research on the bacteria in their mouths.
Though extremely rare, sharks present a danger in areas where humans and sharks have frequent interaction, particularly in areas like the Flying Fish marina, where Wakeman fell, and where people often feed fish carcasses to the sharks. Florida consistently ranks as the state with the most shark bites, according to data from the Florida Museum of Natural History. In 2023, the state had 16 bites, though none were fatal.
Most bites stem from surfing and other water activities, which Wakeman also participates in; he has had many interactions with sharks over the years. Of course, he said Thursday, despite all of that, the one time he did get bitten was because he slipped and fell.
The 7-foot shark didn’t want to eat Wakeman, though that didn’t seem to matter. As if on instinct, it was there, sinking its teeth into Wakeman’s leg and dragging him entirely underwater. Then a second shark grazed his shoulder. The bite felt like a punch, Wakeman recalled, but the adrenaline kept him from focusing on the pain. The first shark had bitten through his kneecap.
Luckily, the first shark let go. Somehow, Wakeman managed to pull himself several feet up onto the boat — a difficult feat, even for someone in good shape — and get his captain’s attention, as there were no witnesses to what he had just gone through. Luckily, the captain was able to apply a tourniquet to his leg so he didn’t bleed out. Then they put him in a wheelbarrow and pulled him the rest of the way to a van.
While in the van, Wakeman recalled, the adrenaline started wearing off and the pain grew unbearable. The captain told him he needed to apply gauze to his wound.
“He looked at me and was like, ‘This is gonna hurt really bad,'” Wakeman said, “and I was like, ‘All right, whatever.'” He had never passed out from pain before, but did then, and remained in and out of consciousness. He asked the captain if he was going to die.
“I wasn’t freaking out,” Wakeman said. “… I was just like, ‘Hey man, I really don’t want to die now. This ain’t it.'”
But he didn’t die. At a local clinic, a doctor stitched up Wakeman’s leg to stop the bleeding. That afternoon, Wakeman’s mother, Melynda, was visiting family in Georgia and his father, Rufus, had gone fishing and left his phone at home. When he got back about 7 p.m. and opened his texts, one of them was from an unknown number, the wife of the boat captain. It said “hi, this is Lynn from The Bucket List,” he recalled. “Marlin fell off the dock and got bitten by a shark.”
“As a parent, I can tell you that time really does stand still,” Rufus Wakeman said, “and everything in the periphery goes into a blur, and it’s the worst text you can get.”
He called the number and his son answered the phone.
“‘Is this real?'” Rufus Wakeman recalled asking.
“Yeah,” his son said.
“‘Are you all right?'”
“I think so,” Marlin Wakeman said.
“He was in shock, he was just taking it,” Melynda Wakeman said. She remembered him telling her, “thank God it was me instead of someone else.”
Pictures shared with reporters show Marlin Wakeman at the hospital, his leg covered in blood, throwing up a shaka sign. Later, his leg stitched up and not wanting to spend the night alone in the hotel room, he went to hang out with his friends.
Part of Wakeman’s relaxed attitude stems from growing up surfing and fishing, frequently interacting with sharks. His father, Rufus, is a fisherman.
Though he felt better, Wakeman’s leg was far from healed. Without proper treatment, it could become infected by bacteria from the shark’s mouth and the water he was struggling in. Rufus Wakeman called a former surgeon he knew, who connected the family with Dr. Borrego, the trauma surgeon at St. Mary’s with shark bite expertise. The group managed to get a small plane to fly them from the Bahamas to West Palm Beach two days early, as a helicopter wouldn’t have made the 400-plus-mile long journey.
At the hospital, Borrego undid the stitches on Wakeman’s leg and cleaned out the wound as thoroughly as he could to prevent infection. The wound on Wakeman’s leg was over a foot long, leading Borrego to believe the shark was at least 7 feet if not 8 feet long.
Even though Borrego treats multiple shark bites a year, Wakeman’s experience, he said, “gives me chills.”
“Hearing the story, it shocks me he was able to get out of that water,” Borrego said. “It’s really hard to get on the boat when you’re in water. The fact that there’s 20 sharks in there and you were able to get out of there and still have a leg is amazing.”
An orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Rami Elkhechen, then went to work repairing Wakeman’s knee, washing out the joint carefully to prevent bacteria from getting into the cartilage, which can cause arthritis.
He was lucky, the doctors agreed. First, because the shark was inches from biting his artery. Second, because the shark let go fairly quickly, avoiding more severe injury.
“I did make a joke to Dr. Borrego that the shark didn’t like the way that Marlin tasted, because he could have done a lot more,” Elkhechen said.
Wakeman’s family thanked the doctors in both South Florida and the Bahamas for attending to him.
Asked if the near-death experience gave him a different perspective on life, he said, “it hasn’t really affected me too much. It’s pretty close to it, so I don’t know, maybe I’ll have some nightmares here and there, but I think I’ll be all right.”
He plans to go back to the same marina, but said he will take an extra few seconds next time he jumps on a boat.