Australia teen surfer’s lucky escape after shark bite

SYDNEY// A teenage girl on Friday described her shock after being bitten by a shark when she landed on top of it while surfing off a popular Australian beach.

Kirra-Belle Olsson, 13, was on her board off Avoca Beach early in the morning when the shark grabbed her left leg.

“She’d fallen off her board and she felt something grabbing her leg,” Surf Life Saving New South Wales spokeswoman Donna Wishart said.

“She made her own way back to shore, and then other surfers and people on the beach have assisted her and... they put her in a car and drove her to the hospital.”

Kirra-Belle said she had “dropped in” on the shark, a surfing term for taking someone else’s wave, and it bit her foot and calf three times.

“I paddled in just like in shock, just started laughing. I was like: ‘Whoa, what the hell, I just got bitten by a shark, oh my God,’” she said from her hospital bed.

“And then I got halfway carried up the beach... and telling my friend Saxon, ‘take photos, take photos’.”

She was treated for deep cuts to her leg.

Ms Wishart said Avoca Beach, the scene of a shark attack in 2012 when a surfer was bitten on the arm, would be closed for 24 hours with lifeguards monitoring the area on jetskis.

The shark’s species was not yet known.

The attack came less than a week after some Western Australia beaches were closed following a suspected shark attack on a inflatable boat, although no one was hurt.

Experts say attacks by sharks, which are common in Australian waters, are increasing as water sports become more popular.

This month, two great white sharks were killed after a young surfer lost parts of both arms in an attack off the south coast of Western Australia.

The most recent fatality was last month, when a man was killed in front of his wife while swimming at Byron Bay on Australia’s east coast.

* Agence France-Presse