An Australian town wants to install shark nets to protect swimmers and surfers after a second suspected attack in two weeks.
Seneca Rus, 25, escaped with minor leg injuries after a shark tipped him off his board while surfing at Ballina, some 350 miles north of Sydney.
He described it as a "blessing" that he got away relatively unscathed after Wednesday's incident.
"I was laying on my board and unexpectedly a shark just came up from underneath and knocked me off my board and took a bit of a chunk out of my leg, one of the teeth, and mainly just got the board and the fiberglass.
He added: "I feel very lucky. It's almost like a bit of, I don't know, just a blessing just to have all the limbs still here and one in a million that you'd come out with everything and just a scratch really, not too much."
Mr Rus was treated in hospital and beaches around the area were closed for 24 hours as a precaution.
It comes just a few weeks after a 17-year-old suffered "severe lacerations" after a suspected great white attack off Ballina.
Japanese tourist Tadashi Nakahara, 41, died after losing both his legs in a great white attack at the town's Lighthouse Beach in February last year.
New South Wales state premier Mike Baird is asking the federal government for permission to install the nets along the state's northern beaches for a six-month trial.
He told state MPs it was vital to "prioritise human life over everything" after "extraordinary circumstances" in the Ballina area.
Mr Baird said he would ask the federal government to urgently get the nets installed for a six-month trial.
Environmentalists are against the nets, which are suspended from floats and run parallel to the coast, because they say they are not complete barriers to sharks and kill a wide variety of marine life.
New South Wales has previously been against the nets - which other states use - but the latest attack has made politicians reconsider their position.
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