Australian surfer punches shark, survives attack

Sydney - An Australian surfer survived a great white shark attack by repeatedly punching the four-metre creature as it mauled his arms and legs, witnesses said.

Jake Heron, 40, was surfing off South Australia's Eyre Peninsula on Sunday, an area reknowned for sharks, when he was attacked as his two children watched in horror from the beach.

"No one saw the shark come up to him. It knocked him off the board. It pulled him under because the leg rope was attached to him," fellow surfer Craig Materna told reporters.

"He kicked and punched the shark, I think in the gill."

The shark bit through Heron's wetsuit on the right arm and thigh and also chomped his surfboard, splitting it in two.

"We look up and see this surfboard just pop out of the wave and just this big, massive shark just swam off," Jasmine Buckland, who was on the beach at Fishery Bay, said on Monday.

"Then the shark went at him twice, at his leg, and then his arm, and the board was just bitten in half," she told radio.

Heron, a fisherman by trade, is recovering in hospital after receiving 20 stitches in his arm and 40 stitches in his thigh.

Less than two weeks ago, a marine biologist was killed by a shark, believed to be a great white, while diving off the coast of the South Australian capital Adelaide.

Last December, an 18-year-old surfer was killed by a great white off an Adelaide beach.

The waters off South Australia are a favourite hunting ground of the feared great white.

Across the country there have been four fatal attacks in the past 14 months. Australia's first documented shark attack was in 1791 and there have been more than 625 attacks in the past 200 years, about 190 of them fatal. -- Reuters

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