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You’d be hard pushed to find someone so nonchalant about a shark bite as Lilian Tagliari.
Most people would shy away from a shiver of 50 sharks swimming after fish, but Ms Tagliari dove down to join them off the coast of the Maldives.
For years the travel influencer has come among them in this Indian Ocean spot, home to 30 species of shark, without so much as a nibble.
But this time was different.
She was gently treading water, with flippers on her feet, when a shark appearing to glide right past her suddenly flicked its head and bit.
Even with the muffle of water, Ms Tagliari could be heard screaming as the shark tugged her leg down.
But it seemed the shark had had its fill, releasing her just a moment later.
Despite the initial horror of the bite, Ms Tagliari described it as ‘just a weird little accident that left me some cute scars’ when she shared footage of the attack on Instagram last month.
She later said: ‘We had been with them for a good hour, then I decided to go back to our boat’, she said.
‘Then the conditions got better and I thought “oh a few more dives won’t hurt”.
‘As I came back up this shark decided to take a nibble. I thought “just my luck” because it happens so rarely.’
The clear blue seas around the Maldives are popular with tourists who’ll pay guides to take them swimming with sharks.
Although rare, crossing paths with a tiger shark or an up-to-14ft-long nurse shark ‘might turn deadly’, holiday website Samudra Maldives warned.
One diver had a lucky escape after a shark swam up behind and bit their head before disappearing in the Maldives waters seconds later.
In Ms Tagliari’s case, she survived with little more than a semi-circle of teeth marks among the tattoos on her leg.
She said: ‘I did have to take antibiotics in case of any bacterial infection. I got a sore leg for a few days.’
But as she said on Instagram: ‘YES, I go swimming in the middle of sharks. YES, I like to take photos with sharks. YES, I know I’m in their home. So, I am not complaining.’
There’s some tough competition for the most chilled response to being attacked by a shark.
‘Gnarly Charley’, as 62-year-old Charley Hajek is known to Florida locals, was back surfing five days after a shark bite left him with blood ‘squirting out’ of his foot in the waters off New Smyrna Beach in September.
And 61-year-old Kenji declared ‘I love the sea’ after a shark bit off his leg while he surfed off the Maui coast in Hawaii.
But Ms Tagliari may just take the top spot with her plan to commemorate what she calls ‘some little teeth marks for a new tattoo’.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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