Rockaway Beach shark victim Tatyana Koltunyuk recalls attack in graphic detail

The elderly woman who lost 20 pounds of flesh in New York’s first shark attack since the 1950s earlier this month vividly remembers her attacker’s “green and dirty” teeth and the “cloud of blood” that bloomed in the water when it bit her, her daughter said.

Tatyana Koltunyuk’s daughter, Dasha, said her mother recalled graphic details about the shark attack that occurred swimming at Rockaway Beach in Queens on the evening of Aug. 7.

“[She] felt something bump into her hard, and then she saw the shark on its belly up look at her,” Dasha told Good Morning America of the moment her mother encountered the predator.

“She saw all of its teeth. She described how green and dirty they were. And then the shark attacked. She remembers a cloud of blood in the water.

“The fact that she’s alive is a miracle,” the grateful daughter added.

Koltunyuk felt herself “losing energy” once the shark clamped down on her thigh, and counted to nine in order to make it back to the shore, Dasha explained.

Koltunyuk credits her survival to a quick-thinking police officer who fashioned a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding from the grisly wound before first responders arrived, she said.

The family shared one grim image of Koltunyuk in the hospital, which showed the white-haired woman looking pale in bed.

“The surgeon said he’d never seen anything like it,” Koltuntuk’s son-in-law, Gregg Kallor, recalled of the surgeon’s reaction to the deep gash that exposed the artery, muscle, and much of the femur.

Koltunyuk’s family says she is convinced that she was attacked by a great white shark.

The teeth marks around her injury suggested a bull or thresher shark, though a great white could not be eliminated from possibility, a source familiar with the incident previously told The Post.

“My mom is in love with nature, with animals. And I do think that she’d want me to tell the public to not hate on sharks, but to do everything we can to swim safely,” Dasha said.

Koltunyuk’s remarkably positive attitude extends to her recovery, which doctors say will take years.

In the four weeks since the attack, she has already weathered seven surgeries, and will have at least one more.

Despite the long road ahead, Koltunyuk – who became a single mother shortly after immigrating to New York from Odessa, Ukraine with her daughter and late husband in the 1990s – reassured her loved ones that “‘at least [my] life certainly isn’t boring,’” GMA’s Trevor Ault said.

“She’s a fighter. And she’s fought for everything in our lives on her own,” Dasha told the outlet.

As of Thursday, a GoFundMe for Koltunyuk’s recovery has already raised over $88,000 of its $150,000 goal.

“Our mother is an empathetic, thoughtful, and deeply proud woman who would never ask for anything, always putting others before herself. So we are asking for help on her behalf,” Dasha and her husband wrote on the fundraiser page shortly after the attack.

At the time of her horrific injury, they added, the mother of one was looking forward to her retirement “when she could — for the first time in her life — take a break.”

In addition to swimming every day, Koltunyuk, of Astoria, planned to explore the city with a new puppy and travel with her daughter and son-in-law, both of whom are renowned musicians.