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a massive wound on the fleshy part of his forearm. I dropped his weights
and tank and helped him out, sat him in a nearby chair, wrapped his
arm in a towel, and ran for help. It was obviously a shark bite. An am-
bulance arrived quickly and took Tom o¤ to the hospital.
As I hosed the blood o¤ the wall and deck I glanced over at the tank
and noticed something with hair on it floating on the surface. Grab-
bing a nearby dip net I fished it out; it was a piece of Tom's arm. Af-
ter rinsing o¤ the filamentous algae I raced downstairs, put it in a petri
dish, and gave it to someone to drive to the hospital. The doctors sewed
it back onto Tom's arm, but they didn't know until his cast was o¤ six
weeks later whether the attached piece would successfully graft. Luck-
ily it did, and Tom regained almost full use of a badly scarred arm.
Tom told me later that when he finally saw the sevengill swim by
through the murky water he grabbed its tail and it whipped around at
him with its mouth wide open. He threw his arm up in front of his
face, and the shark grabbed it and bit down hard. Even a small sev-
engill has a very large mouth full of small but razor-sharp teeth well
designed for removing chunks of flesh. Tom is very lucky the shark
didn't get his face. He never went in the water again, and Herald backed
o¤ on insisting that everyone be able to do everything.
The ongoing contest of wills between Dr. Herald and me, as well as
an exciting new job o¤er, eventually led to my leaving after only three
years at Steinhart Aquarium. By then Bob Kiwala had also left, having
moved to Texas A & M University to work as a diving biologist on ma-
rine research projects in the Gulf of Mexico. Bob and I were destined
to cross paths again later, but under much more favorable circumstances.
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