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SYDNEY - Four months after fighting his way out of the jaws of a 5m-long great white shark, a diver has returned to the sea to do what he loves best.
Eric Nerhus is back in the water searching for abalone, despite his family's fears that he runs the risk of being attacked again by the ocean's most fearsome predator. The 40-year-old was diving for abalone off Cape Howe, in the far south of New South Wales, when he was mauled by the great white on January 23.
He was saved from almost certain death by the heavy lead weight vest which abalone divers wear as they painstakingly gather the molluscs from the ocean floor. He also managed to gouge the shark in the eyes with an iron chisel used to prise the shellfish off rocks. The force of the shark's bite crushed his face mask and broke his nose. The shark spat him out but was coming in for another attack as Nerhus was hauled aboard his boat by his 15-year-old son, Mark.
Nerhus returned to diving three weeks ago. "To be taken on the bottom, going head first into a great white was a very rare occasion," he told the Daily Telegraph in Sydney. "And I've learned a lesson. I won't be diving offshore in dirty water again." Visibility in the 10m-deep water was so limited that he did not see the shark attack.
Nerhus had to have 75 stitches to a wound extending from his right shoulder to below his left armpit. He has had physiotherapy to try to restore full movement to his badly damaged left shoulder. He has had recurring nightmares about the attack, in which he recalls being crushed like a vice.
His wife and two teenage children have begged him not to return to abalone diving. "But diving and fishing are all I've done in my life. There aren't many options here and it's not really the money, I just enjoy it."
