Bethany HamiltonPerseveranceHigh Achievement — Women

Bethany Hamilton

Soul Surfer, Returned to the Water 26 Days After Losing Her Arm

Bethany Hamilton was 13 years old, sponsored, and on her way to a professional surfing career when a 14-foot tiger shark severed her left arm at the shoulder on the morning of October 31, 2003 in Kauai. She lost over 60 percent of her blood. Twenty-six days later she paddled back into the lineup with one arm. She turned pro in 2007, has won at the highest level of women's surfing for two decades, and has built a parallel career as an author, motivational speaker, and founder of the Beautifully Flawed Foundation, which mentors young women with limb differences.

26 Days After Attack to Return

13 Age When Attacked

20+ Years as Professional Surfer

Soul Surfer NYT Bestselling Memoir

About Bethany Hamilton

Bethany Meilani Hamilton was born February 8, 1990 in Lihue, Hawaii, into a family of surfers. She rode a board at three, was competing at eight, and had her first sponsorship by ten. The trajectory was clear. By 13 she was being projected as one of the next women in line for the World Surf League tour.

On Halloween morning 2003 she was lying belly-down on her board at Tunnels Beach on Kauai’s north shore, alongside her best friend Alana Blanchard and Alana’s father and brother, when a tiger shark estimated at 14 feet attacked. It bit off her left arm just below the shoulder. Alana’s father fashioned a tourniquet out of a rashguard. By the time the family got her to Wilcox Medical Center she had lost over 60 percent of her blood and was in hypovolemic shock. Her father, who had been scheduled for knee surgery in the same operating room that morning, gave up his slot for hers. She survived.

She was back in the water 26 days after the attack. She entered her first major competition on January 10, 2004 — less than three months after losing her arm — and placed fifth. A year later she won the Explorer Women’s division at the 2005 NSSA Surfing Championships, her first national title. She turned professional in 2007. In 2014 she won the Surf ’n’ Sea Pipeline Women’s Pro. Her book Soul Surfer was published in 2004 when she was 14 and adapted into the 2011 film starring AnnaSophia Robb (who learned to surf with one arm to film the role). The 2018 documentary Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable spent five years following her transition from teenager into pro surfer, wife, and mother.

She is openly Christian and has built her speaking and book career around that frame. Her line — “I don’t need easy. I just need possible.” — is the line that anchors much of the work. She is married to youth minister Adam Dirks and they have four children. The Beautifully Flawed Foundation (originally Friends of Bethany) runs retreats for traumatic amputees and young women with limb differences. In 2024 she became the first amputee contestant on The Masked Singer, performing as Macaron with a stationary left costume arm. She has not yet stopped competing. The shark-bitten board she was riding the day of the attack lives at the California Surf Museum.