An 18-year-old school student has described his encounter with a three-and-a-half metre bull shark as “two minutes of terror”.
Keen spearfisher Lachlan Pye said he was deep diving off the coast of North Queensland when things took a turn for the worse.
Mr Pye was lining up his shot at another fish when he turned into the shark’s prey.
“I didn’t see it at all until it was underneath me,” he said.
In dramatic video recorded on Mr Pyre’s Go-Pro he is seen frantically kicking at the shark in the hope of surviving.
“It pulled my foot down, I felt my ankle move and I looked down and it had taken a couple of chomps at the fin,” he said.
Mr Pye’s right flipper was the only casualty of the encounter, even the fish on the end of his spear was still in tact.
“It didn’t go for the fish really, it just went for me.”
“I feel pretty lucky I’ve got my feet still,” Mr Pye said.
Mr Pye’s friend Presley Wilcox, was just metres away on a boat but completely oblivious to what had happened beneath the surface.
“I just hear (him say) shark, and yeah it had bit me,” Mr Wilcox said.
Despite the close encounter, the teenagers said they would return to the water.
“That’s the risk you take,” Mr Pye said.
