Great white shark attacks, quickly lets swimmer go, off California coast

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — Steven Robles was an hour into his regular weekend swim off some of Southern California's most popular beaches when he came face-to-face with a great white shark.

The 7-foot-long juvenile had been trying to free itself from a fisherman's hook for about half an hour.

"It came up to the surface, it looked at me and attacked me right on the side of my chest," Robles, 50, told KABC-TV. "That all happened within two seconds, I saw the eyes of the shark as I was seeing it swim toward me. It lunged at my chest, and it locked into my chest."

As a reflex, he tried to pry open the shark's mouth.

"I was like, 'Oh my God, this is it. Oh my God, I'm going to die. This is really, this is it,' " Robles told CNN.

And then, just as quickly as it struck, the shark let go and swam away.

Robles is familiar with the waters of the Southern California coast. His Saturday morning routine included a swim from Hermosa Beach north to Manhattan Beach with fellow amateur distance swimmers, and last summer he completed a difficult swim about 20 miles from Santa Catalina Island to the Rancho Palos Verdes peninsula to raise money for a school in Nicaragua.

Robles had been going for 2 miles with about a dozen friends Saturday when he encountered the shark around 9:30 a.m., fellow swimmer Nader Nejadhashemi said Sunday.

"He said 'I've been bit,' and he was screaming," said Nejadhashemi, who didn't see the shark even though he was just 5 feet away.

At first Nejadhashemi thought it must be a cramp. "Then," he said, "I saw the blood."

Nejadhashemi reached his friend and checked that "all his extremities were intact," then comforted him as others in the group flagged a nearby paddle boarder.

"I don't know how we managed to push him on the paddle board but we did," he said. Once several surfers came over to help pull the board in, Robles was on his way to the shore, where paramedics treated his wounds. He was taken to the hospital but by Sunday morning had been released.

The shark remained in the area for about 20 minutes and then disappeared, authorities said.

It's illegal to fish for great white sharks. The fisherman told several local media that he was trying to catch a bat ray, not a shark, and that he didn't cut the line sooner because of how many swimmers were in the water.