AS Ryan Hunt ventured out for one of his regular surfing sessions at Wallabi Point, little did he know he would come face to face with a shark for the first time.

“I went surfing on Wednesday afternoon and at about 6pm I started coming in,” he said

“I was in waist deep water and that’s when a shark attacked me and it bit straight through my leg rope into my leg.

“I kicked it a couple of times and it lost its grip but it kept coming back about three times to bite me again.

“The last time I was kneeing and kicking it to get off and then it went away.

“Once it got away I yelled out ‘shark’ and I body surfed back to shore.”

It was a terrifying moment for the Old Bar surfer, one which he said could have been a lot worse.

“It was pretty scary. At first I didn’t think it was a shark and then it clicked in that it was,” he said.

“I was relieved when it finally let go but at the time you don’t know where it is and whether it might come back. I just had it in my mind to get out of there.

“I got off pretty lucky, there’s no foot missing.”

Ryan’s shark attack was news that his partner Kahlee Connelly didn’t believe initially.

“He told me to come into town to see some people, and when I came in he said he was at the hospital and he was going there to see doctors,” she said.

“I said ‘what for?’ and he said I’ve been bitten by a shark.

“And I said ‘no you haven’t, don’t lie’, and he said I swear on my life, and that’s when I believed him.”

Ryan’s father Bernard said his son had an adventurous spirit, which came to the fore fighting off the shark.

“He’s pretty amazing isn’t he, and it was very brave, he is brave,” he said.

“It’s quite amazing what he does in life and this is just another ‘Ryan episode’.

“He’s been at the emergency ward quite a few times.”

The 20-year-old is currently being attended to at Manning Hospital, where he has undergone an operation for the wounds to his left leg. The hospital arranged for Ryan to speak with media, some visiting from Sydney, early yesterday afternoon.

He had also been interviewed by morning television from his hospital bed.

He said he felt fine, less than 24 hours after the attack.

“I’m not too bad at the moment, I woke up a bit groggy from the operation but I’m feeling pretty good.”

The avid surfer said he couldn’t wait to get back into the water.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back on the board, maybe in two weeks as we have a surfing comp on November 15,” he said.

Ryan  is an experienced surfer who recently returned from competing in Japan.

Earlier this month Bunbury man Sean Pollard suffered devastating injuries when a shark attacked him near Esperance.

Only a matter of weeks before that, and further north on the NSW east coast than Wednesday's incident, British expat Paul Wilcox was killed by a shark at Byron Bay's Clarkes Beach.