Steve Backshall has been left in agony after an underwater accident with sharks.
Steve Backshall
The 48-year-old explorer was left with blood running out of his ears after he perforated his ear drums in a terrifying incident during a night dive with whale sharks in the Indo Pacific.
He told the Daily Mirror newspaper: "I had a bit of a cold and I free dived straight down onto the whale shark and perforated both my eardrums and came racing up to the surface in agonising pain and jumped out. There was blood running out of my ears and I was in agony and there was a bloody great whale shark at the back of the boat, just there in the water.”
The incident occurred when Steve was filming his new documentary 'Shark with Steve Backshall' and he was so desperate to get footage that he went back into the water despite his injury.
He said: "It was our only chance to get it, and our only chance to do the filming so I sat on the side of the boat going: 'Oh this is a nightmare, I’ve completely stuffed this. This is our one chance.'
"After about an hour, it was still there, so I put some earbuds in, to stop the water actually going into my head, and jumped into the water and we got our sequence - in agonising pain and with bleeding ears. But it kind of worked! It was awful, it was so so painful. I didn’t dive down or anything, just to be back in the water was enough."
And Steve admitted he lied to an ear specialist about getting back in the water.
He explained: "He said, ‘When you perforate your eardrums, there will be no diving for you for the next two or three months. He then asked, ‘You didn’t get back in the water, did you?’ And I went, ‘Er, no! Certainly not.’"
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