Surfer Punches Shark To Escape Attack, Other Man vs. Shark Incidents

An Australian surfer recounted Tuesday a gripping tale of how he escaped a shark that attacked him multiple times while he was surfing off the waters on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Thirty seven-year-old Marcel Brundler was able to free himself from the clutches of a great white shark and escaped almost unscathed by punching and kicking it, said reports.

As the Swiss-born surfer was waiting for a wave not far from Bells Beach along the Victorian coastline, he spotted the dorsal fin of an estimated 10-foot long great white swimming close to him.

"My mate was screaming out, and I said 'Nah, don't worry, it's just a dolphin but then I realized quick it was a massive dorsal fin—like, big. And I said, 'Oh s***,'" recalled Brundler in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The surfer said he was protected by his thick rubber wetsuit while he fended off the shark with his surf board.

"Then it kind of dived off, came back and circled me, and took a fair notch out of my board, circled me again, then it got me on my wettie, it got me on my hip," he added.

Brundler then started yelling and delivered a punch to the shark as a wave came around, helping him ride back to the shore safely. He only received a little scrap on his back while his board bore most of the brunt. It was “a really really unpleasant morning,” he said.

The surfer stated in the interview that the attack did not change his interest in surfing. “It kind of does [put me off surfing again] but also doesn’t, because I’m always in the nature of fish, on the boat, surfing. So it’s just something you live with, it’s just a fish,” he said.

The attack is another in a long list of encounters between humans and sharks, and which involved the former fighting the fish to escape their clutches.

In April, a man punched a shark to save his wife after it bit her leg while she was snorkeling near the remote Ascension Island, in the British territory of St Helena.

A video emerged of an Australian man wrestling with a shark telling it to 'f--- off' after it tried to steal fish from his net.

In the incident that occurred in May, David Wilks and his son were fishing in Port Pirie, South Australia, when the shark appeared near their boat and began ripping fish out of their nets. After some unsuccessful attempts at driving it away, Wilks delivered a punch to the nose and the shark let go of the net after some struggle.

Another surfer, Joe Tanner was paddling on his surfboard off the Oregon coast in November 2016, waiting to catch a wave, when a toothy great white shark clutched onto his leg. The 29-year-old battled with the shark, punching it repeatedly in the gills until it let go of his leg, allowing him to escape to the shore safely.