Mauricio Hoyos and Captain Ahab both want to reunite with an ocean creature, though for wildly different reasons.
While the Moby-Dick character wanted revenge against the white wale that bit his leg off, Hoyos tells BBC Mundo that he has no such feelings toward the shark that bit his head.
Hoyos, a marine biologist, was bit by a female Galapagos shark while on a research trip in Costa Rica. He says the attack happened while he was attaching a tag on the shark’s fin for research purposes.
“I lowered my head, and what I felt was its lower jaw digging into my cheek and its upper jaw into my head,” Hoyos recalls. “I was there, I imagine for a second, no more, inside its jaw, and then it simply opened it again. When it closed it, I felt the pressure of the bite, and then it just let me go.”
Aside from scars on his face, Hoyos completely recovered from the encounter. He does not blame the shark, who he feels was exhibiting normal animal behavior, and he hopes to encounter her again in the future.
“This is the proof that this female spared my life; I can’t put it any other way,” Hoyos says of his scars. “And this will allow me to continue speaking well of sharks and advocating for their conservation in the future.”