instagram: From Shark Attack Survivor to Shark...

From Shark Attack Survivor to Shark Advocate: Meet Mike Coots
To see more from Mike’s day-to-day life on Kauai, follow @mikecoots on Instagram.
Shark attack survivor and amputee Mike Coots (@mikecoots) isn’t afraid of sharks. When he was 18, Mike was attacked by a tiger shark while surfing off the coast of his hometown of Kilauea, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai’s north shore; it took Mike five weeks to recover from the near-fatal accident, which resulted in an amputated leg. “The hardest part wasn’t losing a limb,” says the photographer and still-avid surfer, who is outfitted with a carbon fiber prosthetic leg. “It was being out of the water.”
Almost 20 years after the attack, Mike is more of a shark lover than ever, and has devoted his life to being their advocate. “I love the beauty of them surviving mass extinctions,” he describes. “They’ve outlived dinosaurs. They’re older than trees. The entire Earth has been wiped out, species have completely disappeared, and sharks have existed and survived through that. I believe, strongly, that they’re here for a reason.”

(Source: instagram)

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