Phil Mummert, 28, was surfing at Bunker Bay – 150 miles from Perth – when he was knocked off his board by the giant 16ft predator and bitten on the leg
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Phil Mummert, 28, with his partner Mish (Image: mish_wright/Instagram)
An Australian surfer has recounted how he escaped the jaws of a 16ft great white shark by shoving his surfboard into its mouth and punching it in the face.
Phil Mummert, 28, was surfing at Bunker Bay – 150 miles from Perth – when he was knocked off his board by the giant predator.
Phil was then bitten on the leg by the shark, leaving him with numerous deep puncture wounds in his leg.
The attack happened on July 31 but details of the incident emerged in full in the surfing website Magic Seaweed today.
Phil had his leg stapled back together in hospital after the attack
(Image: Facebook)
"The tail half was still attached to me with my leggy [leg rope] and it was in its mouth.
"It ended up between me and the shark, so I grabbed it with both hands and tried to push it into his mouth.
"The other guys in the water said I was punching him in the head and on the nose as well. I remember the shark swimming around me and I was just trying to keep my eyes on him and I was trying to push him away."
"I remember seeing the size of his dorsal fin as he was swimming around. It was massive, at least a metre high. He was still there next to me when the other guys got to me," Mr Mummert said.
The shark knocked Phil off his board and bit his leg
(Image: Facebook)
"Once I realised what was happening, my first instinct was to just keep that piece of board in its mouth, because I figured if he was biting that then he wasn’t biting me.”
Three friends who were in the water at the time rushed to his aid and managed to hoist Phil onto a longboard and brought him ashore.
He was then rushed to a nearby hospital where they stapled his badly-injured leg together with 63 staples.
(Image: Facebook)
"Really, I shouldn’t be alive. Or at the very least lost a leg”, he told the magazine.
There have been five fatal shark attacks in Australia so far this year .
Last month and Australian dad rescued his son from a shark's jaws after it snatched the boy from a fishing boat and began mauling him.
Part of the surf board that was used to fend off the great white
(Image: Facebook)
A local diver claims people who witnessed the attack off the coast of Tasmania believed the culprit may have been a great white.
The child suffered cuts to his arms, chest and head in his ordeal about 5km off the coast of Tasmania on Friday afternoon, local time.
The shark is said to have swum away after the dad fought it off.
Sourse: www.mirror.co.uk
