A surfer fought off a Great White Shark by repeatedly punching it in the face after it bit his arm and sunk its teeth into his surfboard.
Nick Minogue, 60, from Auckland, New Zealand, was trying to catch some waves at Pauanui Beach on Saturday when his morning was interrupted by a three-metre long visitor with a fin.
"I was quite a long way out, there was quite a solid swell running, I was just paddling along and got hit on the side of my elbow and forearm," Mr Minogue told the New Zealand Herald.
“By the time I realised what was going on its teeth were definitely latched on to the front section of the board."
The brave surfer said during the attack he suddenly remembered that sharks don’t like to be punched in the eyes and nose.
He swore at the animal and asked it to back off before aiming a blow at its face.
“So I actually shouted at it 'f***off!' and went to punch it in the eye and missed," he added
"Then I pulled my fist back and shouted 'f*** off!' again and got it right smack bang in the eye. It's quite a big eye, about three knuckles across, and it's eye kind of looked up and rolled up.
"In between the two punches, it crunched down a bit more on the board and then disengaged its teeth, got its jaws off and then I got brushed by the dorsal fin and the tail fin and swam off."
Mr Minogue said he was paddling in a isolated location when he was attacked and there was only one other surfer in the vicinity about 50 metres nearer to the shore.
"He heard me screaming, it was just the two of us out there at this stage, and we just started paddling in as fast as we could. The German guy was kind of screaming the whole way which probably made me paddle even faster."
Mr Minogue was left with a cut on his arm and credited his clothing from saving him from more serious injuries.
He said he still had his limbs and the incident could have been a lot worse.
The attack hasn’t put him off getting back into the water and he has a boys surfing tripped planned for next week – though he will have to replace his board.
Experts believed the bite marks on the surfboard as well as eye-witness accounts meant that the attacker was a Great White Shark.
