David Pickering, 26, had a lucky escape when he was savaged by a tiger shark off Coral Bay yesterday. He was in a popular swimming spot called The Lagoon when the shark made its move.
“I turned around and boom, there he was,” Pickering said.
“[The force of the impact] was enough to actually bring me forward and under because I scraped my knee on his belly.
He said he ws snorlelling in deep, murky water at the time.
“It actually attacked me from the front which is pretty, pretty unusual,” Pickering told media.
“I rolled over and like, snorkeled. The worst thing was that I couldn’t see if he was coming back for seconds.”
He had sustained bits and cuts to his right forearm but managed to fight the shark off with his other arm and it let go.
When the shark took off, Pickering alerted his tour before heading back to shore where he was flown to Royal Perth Hospital.
“I just kicked, kicked and held (my arm) out of the water),” he told the Seven Network.
Pickering insisted the attack had not put him off snorkelling.
He said would be back in the water “as soon as this bad boy (arm) is healed up”.
The attack came only a day after a surfer was mauled by a shark off the NSW coast.
Glen Folkard, 44, was surfing at Redhead Beach near Newcastle on Wednesday when what was thought to be a bull shark dragged him under, slicing his leg and biting a chunk out of his surfboard.
He suffered a deep laceration and was in a stable condition in Newcastle’s John Hunter Hospital.
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