We’re all trying to amp up our Instagram photos. Whether you’re taking day trips solely for an Insta photoshoot or you’re ordering the most colorful cake on the menu to start your career as a foodie photog, it’s increasingly difficult to capture ~unique~ content on your social feed. However, an Instagram model took her Insta career to the extreme and it came back to bite her, literally.
Katarina Zarutskie was vacaying in the Bahamas when she decided to snap an Insta photo of her swimming with a swamp of nurse sharks, MTV UK reports. Clearly, one of the nurse sharks got a little out of control with their photobombing ways because it took a bite out of the model’s arm.
In the first photo on her Instagram, you can Zarutskie floating on her back as one of the nurse sharks locks onto her arm. While the shark held her underwater for several moments, Zarutskie kept her cool under this stressful situation, which might have helped her stay relatively safe.
According to BBC, Zarutskie still had parts of the shark’s teeth in her arm, but her wounds only required stitches and antibiotics. (Which is extremely fortunate for any shark attack.) Although some of you are wondering why the hell anyone would willingly swim with sharks, the BBC notes that Zarutskie is a marine fanatic.
Though many sharks get a bad rep for being aggressive carnivores (which they are), The Florida Museum at the University of Florida notes that nurse sharks aren’t particularly aggressive. In fact, there are very few documented incidents where nurse sharks have attacked humans. However, Zarutskie’s apparent proximity to the shore might have contributed to the attack.
Being bottom feeders, nurse sharks regularly feed near shore. From the photos, it appears that this was taken near shore or at least near a sandbar, which might have led this confused nurse shark to mistake her arm for a fish.
Since news of her shark encounter started circulating, Zarutskie has made her Instagram private due to cyber harassment (seriously, she survived a shark attack, stop harassing her). However, her quick-wit during the shark attack might help prevent future shark attacks from turning fatal.
“I think if someone was screaming and flailing around it definitely could have changed the situation,” Zarutskie tells the BBC. Instead of becoming frantic, the Insta model stayed calm, which might have allowed her to escape the situation without drawing the attention of the other sharks.
Additionally, you can see in her photos that she lifted her injured arm up above her head as she used her other hand to put pressure on the open wound. This not only helps prevent extensive blood loss (because her extremity is safely elevated above her heart), it also prevents her blood from dripping into the water so that it doesn't attract the other nurse sharks.
Regardless, this definitely isn’t how anyone wants to pregame (over pre-gram) shark week, and we’re glad that Katarina Zarutskie and the sharks are safe.