Bethany Hamilton

Bethany Meilani Hamilton (born February 8, 1990) is an American professional surfer and writer who survived a 2003 shark attack in which her left arm was bitten off and who ultimately returned to professional surfing. She wrote about her experience in the 2004 autobiography, Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board, which was adapted into the 2011 feature film, Soul Surfer, in which she attributes her strength to her Christian faith. Hamilton was also the subject of a 2018 documentary, Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable, which discusses her marriage to Adam Dirks and how marriage and motherhood have affected her professional surfing career. Early life Hamilton was born on February 8, 1990, to Tom and Cheri Hamilton in Lihue, Hawaii. She has two older brothers, Noah and Timothy. After learning how to surf at the age of three, Hamilton began surfing competitively at the age of eight and gained her first sponsorship by age ten. Hamilton was home-schooled from sixth grade through high school by her mother, a housewife, while her father was a waiter at a town café. Shark attack and recovery On October 31, 2003, 13-year-old Hamilton went for a morning surf along Tunnels Beach, Kauai, with her best friend, Alana Blanchard, as well as Alana's father and brother. While Hamilton was lying on her surfboard stomach-down and talking with Alana, a tiger shark attacked her. It swiftly bit off her left arm, she was dangling it in the water, just below the shoulder. The Blanchards helped paddle Hamilton back to shore, then Alana's father fashioned a tourniquet out of a rash guard and wrapped it around the stump of her arm. Hamilton was rushed to Wilcox Memorial Hospital. By the time she arrived there, she had lost over 60% of her blood and was in hypovolemic shock. Hamilton's father, who was scheduled to have knee surgery that same morning, was already there, but she took his place in the operating room with the same doctor. When the news of the shark attack broke, a family of fishermen led by Ralph Young presented to investigators photos of a tiger shark they had caught and killed about one mile from the attack site. It had surfboard debris in its mouth. When measurements of its mouth were compared with those of Hamilton's broken board, it matched. In late 2004, the police officially confirmed that it was the same one that had attacked her.