SANDY — The Jones family likes exploring. Jeremy and Christine Jones were hoping to do just that when they surprised their children with a trip to the Caribbean last month.
"They were just like, 'We are going to the Bahamas,’" 8-year-old Asher Jones said.
But the biggest surprise was what happened to Asher on the last day of the family's trip.
“When I told everybody I had been bitten by a shark, they said, ‘Are you OK?’” the boy said when he went back to school. He easily became the coolest kid on campus.
The Sandy family had gone on an excursion to play with some docile sharks. “The water was so clear, and there were sharks swimming near my feet,” Asher recalled.
Then the unthinkable happened. Asher was attacked.
“When the shark bit me, it felt like an alien grabbing my back and just squeezing," he said. "It was super painful. It was like a really bad sting feeling.”
His father witnessed the whole encounter and quickly pulled the small shark off of him.
“The shark went out of the water and put his mouth on Asher’s back,” Jeremy Jones said. “I was thinking it might have just suctioned onto him.”
The family was told by their excursion tour guide that the docile sharks were not dangerous and rarely bit people. When Asher was attacked, though, everyone got out of the water immediately.
“There is chaos immediately, everybody in the water — the kids, the adults are screaming,” Jeremy Jones said.
Christine Jones was on a nearby dock and helped get her son to safety.
“He just kept saying, ‘Mom, am I going to be OK?’” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be OK.’”
Luckily, he walked away with only minor cuts from the shark’s teeth. Asher is now trying to make sense of it all.
“Apparently I was super like bright or white, and so they thought I was like food,” he said.
As for getting back in the water, it’s a chance Asher said he is willing to take.
“I think it’s not going to bite me again,” he said. “Like that was crazy and super rare.”
Asher posted the video of the adventure to his YouTube channel.
Contributing: Viviane Vo-Duc