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“Well, I finally got bit at the inlet this morning,” Charley Hajek announced on social media Sunday, September 22. “SHARK PARK living up to its name! Surf’s firing however get out there.”
Hajek, 62, who goes by “Gnarley Charley” on Instagram, was surfing at Ponce Inlet in New Smyrna Beach, Florida on Sunday when the incident occurred. Around 11 a.m. in the morning, Hajek stepped off his board in water just above knee-high onto what he identified as a bull shark.
“Nobody’s out, the waves are firing, it’s pumping, I’m surfing for two hours, having the best time of my life,” said Hajek. “I could tell I was on top of something. That split second I go ‘Oh (expletive) I bet I’m on a shark.’ By the time I even thought of that, it bit me so fast. It was so quick and the thrust was so powerful that when I was in his mouth for that split second, it bit down on me and let me go.”
Hajek applied a tourniquet with his leash and was able to drive himself to the hospital where he received eight stitches. The bite will keep him out of the water for six to eight days, which will end his streak of surfing 148 days in a row.
“Looks like the streak ends on the first day of fall,” Hajek posted to his Instagram stories. “One-hundred and forty-eight straight days of surfing.”
The surfers of New Smyrna Beach are no strangers to shark attacks. The town on Florida’s east coast has earned a reputation as the shark attack capital of the world. According to a 2023 shark attack report by the Florida Museum of Natural History, Florida accounted for 23 percent of unprovoked shark attacks worldwide in 2023, half of which occurred in Volusia County where New Smyrna Beach is located.
Hajek appears to be in good spirits after his attack, posting memes of himself getting attacked by a shark to his Instagram and jokingly naming the shark that bit him “Henry.”
