Shark Attack Ends Honeymoon On Frightening Note: Video

CHARLESTON, SC — A Charleston, South Carolina, couple’s dream honeymoon in the Bahamas ended with a memory they’re not likely to forget. Sarah Illig and Evan Carroll decided to take advantage of an attraction at the resort and swim with sharks on the final day of their honeymoon. Illig was gliding along when she felt something tugging on her arm.

It was a five-foot long nurse shark that had been lurking nearby. The shark chomped down, leaving Illig with several bite marks on her arm.

Nurse sharks, slow-moving bottom dwellers, are generally docile and for the most part are not dangerous, despite having very strong jaws filled with thousands of tiny, serrated teeth. They can become aggressive if they’re bothered by humans.

"It felt like five or six hands were grabbing into the side of my arm and squeezing it as hard as they could," she told Inside Edition. "The bite was only a second long but only a half a second later my mind processed it and I realized that it hurt."

Illig said she thought when the shark bit her arm that Carroll, who caught the shark attack on video, was playing a trick on her, she told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Illig said it “pretty much felt like my worst fear coming true.”

She was able to free herself, then Carroll helped her to the dock as the menacing shark circled back, then applied pressure on the wound until help arrived.

“Evan is the calmest person I know, so he handled everything great,” Illig told People.com. “He calmly got me out of the water and helped with first aid.”

The open flesh wounds on her arm are healing well, though Illig told The Sun newspaper she was worried about staph infection.

She’s glad the encounter with the shark was captured on video. Without proof, she told The Sun, “no one would believe it.”

Watch the video below from Evan Carroll via ViralHog.com.

Cover photo by David Rogers/Getty Images News/Getty Images