Mel Ismail remembers the shark’s eye. More specifically, he remembers it appearing to wink at him moments before the animal severed his right leg. The 56-year-old firefighter was surfing Glenfield Beach near Geraldton, Western Australia, on September 14 when the encounter unfolded. Ismail had been sitting beyond the waves, watching a pod of roughly 20 dolphins when something slammed into him. “I thought I got hit by a dolphin, initially,” Ismail recalled. “And suddenly, bang — something grabbed me and dragged me down into the water. And I knew it was a shark.” Underwater, Ismail came face-to-face with the predator. “I saw its eye … a big black eye,” he said. “But it was winking back at me — I was trying to get my fingers in its eye and just pushing its eye as I was being dragged.” Then came the bite. “I personally reckon it gave me the wink, and then shut my leg off,” Ismail said.…