Andy McDonald was wing-foiling at a local Margaret River surf break on Monday afternoon when he came face-to-face with a shark.<\/p>\n
The 61-year-old was between the Margaret River Bombie and Boat Ramp breaks, near Prevelly in south-west Western Australia, when the incident occurred.<\/p>\n
Mr McDonald said he had no idea the attack was coming.<\/p>\n
“Just out of the blue \u2014 bang \u2014 it felt like a freight train,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Something came up from under the water and just propelled me up into the sky.<\/p>\n
“I knew it was a shark attack.”<\/p>\n
Andy McDonald estimates the bite is 35 to 38 centimetres in diameter. (Supplied: Andy McDonald)<\/p>\n
The Prevelly regular thought he might die.<\/p>\n
“I actually fell on top of it, the shark, and I just started punching it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It sort of dragged me underwater, and dragged the board and the sail under.<\/p>\n
“And I thought, ‘Well, this is it.'”<\/p>\n
Mr McDonald’s experience marks the 18th encounter with a shark in Australia this year.<\/p>\n
Glad to still have his friend<\/p>\n
Mr McDonald said the fearless actions of his friend Neil Mattinson, who came to his aid, were “amazing”.<\/p>\n
“I lost the plot a bit and started screaming for help,” he said.<\/p>\n
“He [Neil] realised that it was more serious, and he looked across and he paddled straight for me, from probably 50 metres away.”<\/p>\n
Mr Mattinson, a Margaret River local, was wind-foiling at the same break when the attack happened.<\/p>\n
He said he initially thought Mr McDonald had injured himself on his wing-foiling equipment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A shark warning has been issued urging beachgoers to exercise caution in the area.\u00a0 (Supplied: Tony Page)<\/p>\n
“The equipment is quite sharp, it has lethal sharpness,” Mr Mattinson said.<\/p>\n
“I was making my way over to him, thinking, ‘Right, we can use leg ropes as tourniquets and whatnot.’<\/p>\n
“Then I heard the word ‘shark.”’<\/p>\n
Mr Mattinson said the risks to his own life did not cross his mind.<\/p>\n
“I never even thought about the what if,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t see it as a choice. Somebody over there is badly hurt or in danger \u2014 I’ll just get there as quick as I can.<\/p>\n
“I’m so grateful to still have Andy.”<\/p>\n
Mr Mattinson said, in hindsight, he believed the shark was still nearby as he approached.<\/p>\n
“As I got closer, I could see what I now know were the foamy chunks from the board,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They were actually coming to the surface as I was approaching him, so I’m thinking the shark had it in its mouth and was underwater, and they just appeared.”<\/p>\n
The two men paddled more than 300 metres to shore together.<\/p>\n
“He [Andy] was starting to sort of run out of energy a bit, because the adrenaline was wearing off,” Mr Mattinson said.<\/p>\n
“He was he was pretty good until he got to shore, and then he was kind of starting to feel a bit wobbly.”<\/p>\n
Mr McDonald said he did not see the shark, but the size of the bite gave him a good idea.<\/p>\n
“[The bite] it’s probably 350 to 380 millimetres in diameter,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It might have been 3 metres, 3-and-a-half, somebody on the beach had said it looked like a juvenile white pointer bite.”<\/p>\n
A Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) spokesperson said testing of the board was underway, but results would take up to two weeks.<\/p>\n
“We are in the process of accessing the board and will conduct analysis of the foil board to confirm the species of shark involved,” they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
DPIRD issued a warning for the Prevelly area and urged beachgoers to exercise caution in the water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy McDonald was wing-foiling at a local Margaret River surf break on Monday afternoon when he came face-to-face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,157796,55826,161272,128,2269,161274,54535,45,161273,338],"class_list":["post-278072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bombie","tag-margaret-river","tag-prevelly","tag-science","tag-shark","tag-shark-attacks-surfer","tag-shark-encounter","tag-wa-news","tag-white-pointers","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}