A nurse on holiday has been seriously injured after a shark pounced on her while snorkelling in the Ecuadorian archipelago.
Delia Yriarte suffered serious injuries to her right leg and said she went numb when she saw the ocean turn red with her blood.
The emergency doctor at the Santa Cruz Island hospital told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the 40-year-old woman "is stable, she is conscious, she underwent surgery on her right leg. She did not lose her leg."
He added that the tourist never lost consciousness or the mobility of her leg and foot despite horrifying footage showing her leg badly injured.
Delia, a US national from Mexico, was swimming in the beautiful tiny islet of Mosquera, on the Galapagos Islands.
Footage shows her being carried off a dinghy with her leg wrapped in material. In another clip, she is seen exercising her right leg with the help of a doctor after her wounds were stitched up.
The Ecuadorian Navy said the injured woman was transferred from Santa Cruz Island to San Cristóbal Island before leaving on a military plane to Guayaquil on the mainland.
Delia told local media: “It felt like a blow so I didn’t initially realise what it was. While I was swimming I felt my leg go numb. When I turned around, I saw there was a lot of blood.”
She added: “By the time we got to the beach, I was already feeling drained. I knew what type of wound it was, I saw it was deep and I knew I was losing a lot of blood.”
She said she never saw the shark that bit her leg.
The Galapagos archipelago is situated about 600 miles from the Ecuadorian coast and the beautiful Islands’ ecological diversity helped Charles Darwin formulate his evolution theory by natural selection.
UNESCO declared the islands a Natural Heritage of Humanity in 1979.
Today, tourists head to the islands to observe whales, sharks and other wildlife.
In 2018, British businessman Andrew Newman was attacked by a shark off the coast of Santa Fe Island. He said he was watching some sea lions when he suddenly felt a strong bite on his leg and noticed a 3.5m-long shark attacking him.
