The first rule of Bite Club? Survive an attack by an apex predator

Paul Kenny was camping behind the dunes at Samurai beach, north of Port Stephens on the Australian east coast, when he jumped naked into the water to “just wake up”. It was freezing but he caught a good wave, got some speed up and hit something. At first he thought it was another person but there was no one else swimming. He had body surfed into the head of a 2.5-metre (8ft) bronze whaler shark and his outstretched arm was in its teeth.

And with that, Kenny met the criteria to enter the small, exclusive Bite Club.

“The initiation is a real bitch” says the founder, Dave Pearson.

All 500 or so members of Bite Club have been in the mouths of apex predators. Literally in the jaws of death. They have survived shark attacks, crocodile bites and lionesses sinking their teeth into their skulls. They have known the absolute terror of being torn apart. They have experienced a primal human fear, that of being eaten alive.

It can be a traumatising, and isolating, experience. Survivors experience elation, pain and anger and battle with their new realities. And so in Bite Club – a Facebook group that spawns real-world friendships where members meet in groups, counsel each other one-on-one and return to the scenes of attack together – they navigate the next big challenge: what happens after you survive?

‘It’s comforting to find out you’re not alone’

Paul Kenny fought for his life against the bronze whaler shark. “I just started punching it because it didn’t let go.” It fell away, but in the churning blood red water he could see its fin coming sideways, turning around. “I thought if he gets me in the legs and takes me down I’ll drown.” He knew he had to try to stop the bleeding. He managed to catch a wave to shore and save his own life.

Related: Australian surfer who lost leg in shark attack vows to be back in the water ‘in no time’

In the aftermath, he says, he was angry “at the world”. He saw a psychiatrist and got even angrier. “I could sit here for the next two or three hours and try to explain how horrific it is and you might get 10% of it.”

For someone who has been through an attack, life alters course. They are profoundly changed. They know the world is not a safe place, that danger can be sudden and random. “It is something that never leaves you,” Pearson says. “Your perspective on life changes. You realise how important life is.”

Pearson began Bite Club after his own experience. Thirteen years ago he was having his usual after-work surf on the mid-north coast of New South Wales when a bull shark came up underneath him and hit him like a “train”. The shark’s jaw clamped down on his left arm and surfboard “and sliced everything off”. The arm hung on, by the flesh.

There is a realisation, says Pearson, “that you are not the apex predator on this planet”.

After surviving, Pearson says, “at first you are just really stoked”. But after the media attention has gone away, after the adrenaline ebbs and the injuries start to heal, the psychological effects arrive . “You’re sitting at home, you’re in constant pain. Then you start having bad dreams and then comes the PTSD. It’s when you feel a little bit better that things start to get on top of you, a lot of depression at how bad your life has gone. You’re grieving for your whole life.”

Pearson discovered that no one who had not themselves survived an attack, no matter how well meaning, could truly understand the aftermath. “I had no one to help me.”

He reached out to another survivor. He wanted to understand the suffering, “the bad dreams, the waking up screaming in the night. How long the nerve damage would last, is this going to be a forever thing?” He would drive for hours to sit down for a coffee or a beer with someone who had been through it. They were seeking the same answers. “And basically that is how it started,” he says. “It’s comforting to find out you’re not alone.”

Officially founded as a registered non-profit in 2013, Bite Club has members from around the world. People who have been attacked by lions, alligators, crocodiles, hippos, bears, bulls, sharks. “Just about any animal that can attack someone we have basically got in our group,” Pearson says. The support group has a psychologist available, who often works pro bono. They share their experiences, recommendations, what has helped them. There are five stages of healing survivors go through, says Pearson, and the last is helping others, with members working to prevent people from going through it “as tough as they did”.

Pearson remembers the anniversaries of people’s attacks and goes back into the water with them when they are ready. “If there’s a shark attack anywhere in the world, I know about it, usually within minutes.”

When the group was still very small he used to call everyone on his long drive home from work on a Friday night. One member told him he had considered taking his own life one Thursday night, but knew Pearson was going to call the next day and didn’t want to disappoint him. “That really shook me. We talk about trauma transfer and stuff like that. I’ll have these deep conversations – it doesn’t do my health any good but if it’s helping someone then it’s worthwhile.”

‘When I felt the teeth was quite a significant moment’

In 1999, Richard Field was 25 years old and running a remote safari camp in northern Botswana when he started following the tracks of a lioness and her tiny cubs. When the tracks stopped he nervously got out of the Jeep to see where they had gone. Then he heard a rustle in the bushes.

“And sure enough it was her and she was coming at me from about 30 metres away,” he says. He knew that if he ran he would be prey, so he tried to stand his ground. “She barrelled into me, I found myself on the ground with her on top of me,” he says. When his punches had no effect – “It was the most useless thing I’ve ever done in my life … It was like she was being tickled” – he put his hands over the back of his neck to protect “the killing zone”. But she “moved up a bit and bit deep into the back of my head. When I felt the teeth was quite a significant moment because there is no coming back from that.” He thought about his fiancee and family. He imagined his friends at his funeral. “I could feel deep regret for all the things I hadn’t done in my life.”

His fast-thinking clients drove the Jeep straight at the lion and she ran off.

Field didn’t know how to process the trauma. He carried on working as a safari guide and didn’t talk about it.

He definitely had PTSD, he says. It took 15 years for him to understand “you can’t just try and push these experiences away. You’ve got to lean into it and accept the new reality. The more I run from it the more I am just going to sit and flounder.”

‘In the first year I felt like a superhero’

Anika Craney was free diving off Fitzroy Island when she sensed danger and saw the bull shark coming at her. She put her finned feet out in front of her and it bit her on the leg. Its teeth dented the bone on its way through the artery, tendons and nerves. She kicked it with her other leg and it let go. Four years later she still has nerve pain in her leg. But the trauma was far worse than the significant physical injuries.

Related: Below the surface: reports of rising shark attacks don’t tell the whole story

“In the first year I felt like a superhero. I think I was living off adrenaline,” she says. She went straight back to work as a boat captain. But then she couldn’t sleep and had graphic violent nightmares. A year-and-a-half after the attack, she says, her world fell apart.

She was surfing with Pearson for the first time since that attack when she hallucinated a shark swimming towards her with its mouth open, “which is what I saw in real life”. The next two years were almost unbearable. “I couldn’t escape the tricks my mind played on me. I would hear people screaming for help, I would see blood in the water, I would see shark fins that weren’t there.” There was a time when she didn’t want to live. “I was afraid that I would never be able to be happy in the ocean again and there was no purpose for life any more.”

Now, she credits the support of Pearson, Bite Club and hard work in therapy, with getting her “pretty much on track … Now I’m helping other people.”

Bite Club, she says, gave her support before she even knew she needed it. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

The club became her family, “more than my actual friends and family who didn’t understand what I was going through”.

All of the people interviewed by the Guardian were attacked in a place that they loved, doing something that was a passion. All of them have returned to those places. The surfers continue to surf. Richard Field takes safari tours in Africa two or three times a year. Anika Craney now teaches free diving, and is captain of a boat at Tweed Heads.

But when they hear of another shark attack, Pearson says, “your post-traumatic stress flares up. Everything becomes a little bit more difficult for a week or so until everyone’s starting to feel OK again.”

And he and Bite Club will be ready for its newest member. The first thing Pearson will tell them is, “this is going to be tough”.