Back on the surfboard, after a shark attack

Last week, I had the absolute privilege of interviewing Chris Blowes for an upcoming episode of The Limb Shift.

Chris’s story is one of the most harrowing yet resilient accounts I’ve encountered—a journey from the jaws of a five-metre great white shark to the world stage of adaptive surfing.

Hearing him recount the details in person was truly profound, especially as he described the incident on Anzac Day 2015. It was his first surf back after a minor knee injury, and while paddling back out, he was hit with immense force.

Chris told me, “It grabbed me so hard and it was going at so much pace. When it hit me, it sort of launched me out of the water… it popped up again behind me and, you know, pulled me underwater for the second time”.

The attack was brutal; he was opened up along his left side and ultimately had his leg amputated above the knee while still underwater. His mates, Nick and Brock, played a critical role in his survival, getting a tourniquet around his leg at the water’s edge—a move that likely saved him from bleeding to death.

Chris’s survival was nothing short of miraculous, as he clinically died in the back of a Landcruiser eleven kilometres down the road. He received CPR for over an hour at Port Lincoln Hospital.

Recalling the scene in the trauma room, Chris said, “I had eight units of blood and twelve units of plasma, which was the whole unmatched bloodstock in the Port Lincoln Hospital… They’d been going for so long and they’re like, ‘We probably need to stop, you know, he’s going to be brain dead.’ And I went to go pull the breathing tube that was in my throat out, and the whole room went silent”.

After ten days in an induced coma and eight weeks in hospital, his recovery was further complicated by complete renal failure. He described the dialysis process as a “world of pain” because it would flush out his pain medication, leaving him in “ten out of ten pain”.

Initially, Chris lost interest in surfing, the sport that had once been his “addiction”. It took two years and some prompting from his mates to get back into the water. He reflected, “I think when I lost surfing, I almost lost a part of me in a way… getting up and going for a surf is probably my go-to when I’m having a bad day now”.

Standing up as an above-knee amputee presented unique challenges, but Chris adapted, starting on a longboard to avoid catching his foot on the tail. His passion eventually led him to win the Australian adaptive surfing title and compete in the world para surfing titles in America.

Today, Chris is living a full life, working in the construction industry, performing corporate speaking, and raising two children. He continues to manage the physical and mental recovery, including phantom pain that feels like “electric shocks every 30s”. His advice for others in similar positions is simple: “Just stick at it. Be patient because it takes time to get back to that, you know, feeling good again… there’s normally more good days than hard days”.