A 50-year-old Venezue­lan fish­er­man re­mains ward­ed at hos­pi­tal af­ter sus­tain­ing se­ri­ous in­juries in a shark at­tack off the coast of Trinidad on Fri­day.The fish­er­man, Si­mon Tormes, was air­lift­ed from his ves­sel by an Air Guard he­li­copter flown by capt Tim Lort and fly­ing of­fi­cer Ly­ne­sha Han­n­away.Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from De­fence Force civ­il mil­i­tary af­fairs of­fi­cer, ma­jor Al Alexan­der, the Air Guard of­fi­cers were con­tact­ed at 2.30 pm on Fri­day af­ter their coun­ter­parts in the Coast Guard re­ceived a dis­tress call from the fish­er­man's ves­sel, Mariscal Su­cre, that a crew on board was bit­ten by a shark while fish­ing.

The of­fi­cers flew to the ves­sel's lo­ca­tion, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 195 nau­ti­cal miles east of Trinidad, sta­bilised the fish­er­man and then flew him to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he re­mains ward­ed.Alexan­der said such med­ical evac­u­a­tions (MEDE­VAC) were with­in the re­mit of the Air Guard. The Air Guard has four AW 139 he­li­copters ca­pa­ble of per­form­ing med­ical evac­u­a­tions, fire-fight­ing, search and res­cue and in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing op­er­a­tions, Alexan­der said.Se­nior air­craft­man An­son Bernard and Sgt Garvin King were al­so in­volved in the op­er­a­tion.