On June 30, 17-year-old Addison Bethea was scalloping near Keaton Beach in Florida when something suddenly clamped down on her leg. She realized it was a shark.

She said: “And the next thing I know something latches onto my leg and I was like that’s not right. And then I look and it’s a big old shark.”

She had learned from Animal Planet that hitting a shark on the nose could help, but she was stuck in a position where she couldn’t reach it. She tried to pull her leg free with her hands, but the shark wouldn’t let go. Then the water turned red.

Her brother Rhett Willingham saw the blood and the shark. He said: “So then I swam over there, grabbed her, and then pushed them all, kind of trying to separate them. And he just kept coming. So I grabbed her, swam backward and kicked him, and then yelled for help.”

Rhett is a trained emergency medical technician and firefighter, and he kept kicking the shark until it let go. Once she was free, Rhett got her onto a nearby boat.

He used a 4-foot rope from the boat as a tourniquet on her right upper leg to stop the bleeding. She was airlifted to the hospital in critical condition and taken for emergency surgery.

Addison’s father Shane Bethea said: “The shark attacked her right leg, front quad muscle was completely annihilated. It was devastating, a nasty, nasty wound. The vascular surgeon took the vein from the left leg and turned it into an artery for the right leg to get blood flow.”

They believe the shark was a bull shark around 9 feet long. It had been spotted in the same area days earlier. Authorities are warning swimmers and scallopers to stay alert after multiple shark sightings and attacks in the region in recent days.