I Survived a Shark Attack in Sydney — Now I’m on Shark Week (Exclusive)

Paul de Gelder, a 47-year-old former member of the Australian Navy, lost his right hand and leg after he was attacked by a shark while conducting a military training exercise in Sydney Harbor in Feb. 2009.

Here, he shares his harrowing experience, including what life has been like for the past 15 years, in his own words, as told to PEOPLE’s Abigail Adams.

It was early in the morning when my life changed forever. It started out as a pretty boring day, too. I was a member of the Australian Navy in my 30s and was doing a counter-terrorism training exercise with my mates in Sydney Harbor when disaster struck.

First, I felt this big whack on the back of my leg, but I didn’t really think too much of it. It didn’t really hurt. But then I turned around, looked down and saw this massive shark staring back at me, which I didn’t expect. I’d actually never seen a shark in person until that very moment. And, to be honest, it was my greatest fear.

All of a sudden, the shark grabbed me by my right hand and the back of my right leg in the same bite. It dragged me underwater and started thrashing me about. I tried to fight it off, but it had my hand, so I couldn’t do anything with it.

Meanwhile, my left hand couldn’t reach the shark’s eye, and when I tried to punch it in the nose, it started shaking me. The pain was just so all-encompassing that the fight just went out of me. 

I was a rag doll in this monster’s mouth while getting thrashed around underwater. I was in total agony and drowning at the same time.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

I remember thinking to myself, “Oh, you’re not going home today; you’re going to die right now.” And I remember asking myself, “Are you ready to die?”

I saw my life flash before my eyes, and eventually thought to myself, “You know what? I’ve lived 10 lives in these 31 years; if this is my time, then I’m ready to go. I have no regrets.” So I just let go and waited for death. 

And that’s when the shark ripped out my hamstring and took off my hand. 

It tried to eat me for breakfast before I’d even had breakfast.

Shockingly, the encounter only lasted about eight seconds, but anyone who’s been through agonizing pain will tell you that it feels like it’s lasting an eternity.

Luckily, my wet suit made me buoyant, so I popped to the surface. That’s when I realized I had survived this nightmare encounter. I started to swim back to my safety boat, and I took a stroke with my right arm, only to realize my hand wasn’t there. My arm ended at the end of my wet suit. 

My medical training quickly kicked in, and I did what I could to slow the bleeding from my hand. At that point, I had no clue that my whole hamstring was gone and that I had an arterial bleed from my leg.

It just so happened that my three teammates in the boat had seen what was going on and were able to reach me before the shark did again. They pulled into the boat, at which point I finally relaxed, my eyes rolled back in my head and I passed out. 

My mate from Papua New Guinea thought I was going into cardiac arrest, so he straddled me and started pummeling me with a series of short, sharp jabs to the chest to stimulate my heart and wake me back up. And it worked. But when I woke up, I saw my hand was gone. 

Even though I was unconscious at times after the attack, I still have a really good grasp of what happened. I was awake through pretty much everything, and I even remember cracking jokes in the boat to try and alleviate some of the stress that I knew the guys were feeling. 

Soon, I was in the back of the ambulance. I remember not being able to breathe because I’d lost so much blood. Later on, one of my doctors said if one of my mates hadn’t reached into my leg to pinch close the artery, I would’ve died within 30 seconds. 

Then, I remember being wheeled into the hospital. I saw the surgeon running alongside the bed and, as some Australians do, jokingly bribed him to save my leg with a carton of beer. The surgeon told me the shark had taken my entire hamstring and 25 centimeters of my sciatic nerve, meaning I would not be able to feel my leg or move it ever again if I kept it. 

I couldn’t speak for a while because I had the tubes in my throat, but the nurses had made a little piece of cardboard with letters on it so I could take a pen and tap on the letters to spell the words I wanted to say. The first words I tapped out were apparently, “F—ing, shark.”

Later on, the surgeon gave me a choice: keep the leg, knowing it would not properly function ever again, or remove it and get a prosthetic. So, I gave him the green light to amputate.

Obviously, all of this was difficult to process emotionally. One of the blessings and curses one gets from the military is the ability to compartmentalize. That was helpful, but only for a time. After six months, I went back to work full time at the Navy Dive School. But the funny thing was, after two years, I discovered that I simply didn’t like teaching for 70 to 80 hours a week. I was teaching people to do this thing that I love without ever getting to do it myself, and it was torture.

I always say that up until my incident, my two greatest fears in life were sharks and public speaking, and it took a shark attack and a bunch of kids I had met at a cancer center who wanted to hear my story for that all to change. For 30 minutes, I was fortunate enough to hang out with these children that had grown up in the hospital and help take their minds off of what they were struggling with, if only for a short while.

I walked out of our room on top of the world after seeing the effect it had on them. It gave me a purpose. It gave me value. And so I thought, “Okay, maybe I can do this.”

Hopefully, my experience can help educate others, keep them safe, and help them see things from the shark’s perspective. I’m adamant about speaking up for this animal that doesn’t have a voice, it doesn’t scream when you torture it and so it’s somehow looked upon as less. But they feel, they suffer, and they need our help.

Which makes it incredibly fulfilling to be asked to come back to Shark Week this year, which is now streaming in full on Max. I got to revisit the site of my attack for the special “Sydney Harbor Shark Invasion” to investigate a recent Great White Shark attack that happened there in what was the first fatal incident in the region in almost 60 years. The dramatic encounter, which was captured on camera, was the sixth attack to occur in as many weeks. When I came back and got in the water, all the emotions came flooding back at once. I won’t lie, being in those waters again was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done, but it was worthwhile to come back to the place that changed my life, for better or worse. 

We like to consider ourselves the most advanced technologically, emotionally, and spiritually, so let’s not point the blame at the sharks, who are just sharks doing shark-y things in their home. We’re the ones going into their home. I’m all the evidence you need to see that sometimes in a wild place, wild things can happen.”

Shark Week is streaming now on Max.