Shark attack victim speaks out about ordeal

A man who was mauled by a shark has detailed the harrowing experience after he was attacked about 130km from the mainland.

A man bitten twice by sharks and forced to wait for help for hours on a remote island chain has spoken of his ordeal, describing the attack as a “freak event”.

Adam Norton was on a fishing trip with his brother and mates off Western Australia’s Pilbara Coast on Thursday when they pulled in close to the Montebello Islands in the evening, about 130km from the WA mainland.

“It was about 6pm … I was just cleaning the boat, heading back in the shore to grab some beers and head back out, and that’s when I got bitten,” Mr Norton told radio 6PR Breakfast.

Adam Norton was bitten on the leg and foot by a shark as he waded through waist-deep water off WA's northwestern coast.

“It was about waist deep … the first initial bite was just below the knee … I started to run, it came back around and got me again,” said Mr Norton, who was bitten on the foot in the second attack by what he described as a two-and-a-half or three metre nurse or lemon shark.

“Initially, the adrenaline got me up the beach, and then I didn’t really feel anything. I could definitely see I wasn’t in great shape.

“The guys I was with are all emergency response trained, so they put a tourniquet on my leg and bandaged it … when you sit there for a bit you sort of start to panic but they kept me pretty calm.

“The sharks were still in the water, so we couldn’t actually get back to the boat … they couldn’t land a helicopter on the island, so they had to send a boat out,” said Mr Norton, who was picked up about three hours later by a Santos oil and gas vessel.

He was taken to nearby Barrow Island, then flown to hospital for treatment.

“I’ve got a pretty decent wound on the bottom of my foot,” Mr Norton told 6PR’s Steve Mills and Karl Langdon on Monday following his release from hospital over the weekend.

“The surgeon said to me you get worse injuries falling off a pushbike, so that made me feel good.

Mr Norton said he thought the shark was a two-and-a-half or three metre nurse or lemon shark. Picture: Getty Images

“In the northwest there’s plenty of sharks from Exmouth upwards … when you’re diving you never take any unnecessary risks for a fish, you’re sort of always in as much control as you can be.

“But this incident was just kind of a freak event, really. Some people I spoke to in the game said it’s pretty bizarre.”

The incident comes nearly two months since the fatal shark attack that claimed the life of 16-year-old Stella Berry, who was mauled while swimming in the Swan River at North Fremantle on February 4.