A surfer who was attacked by a shark off South Australia’s Kangaroo Island has told how he fought the shark as it bit him.

Lee Berryman was surfing at a popular surf break, known as The Sewer, at D’Estrees Bay about 1.30pm yesterday when he was attacked by what was believed to be a bronze whaler shark that was chasing a seal.

He was bitten twice, suffering injuries to his leg, before he drove himself to hospital.

Berryman spoke to 9News from his hospital bed, where he admitted he thought he may not survive the attack.

“This could be the end, because I had to paddle to the rocks,” he said.

“It probably only took me four minutes to get to the rocks, felt like half an hour because he kept coming back.

“He actually had three chomps, three different lines of bites, slowly working his way to my arse.

“I could feel that he had bit me, I knew I was bitten.”

Berryman said he was close to ending his time in the water when the attack began.

“I was paddling back out all of a sudden I got something chewing on me,” he said.

“Straight away I knew exactly what it was because three days earlier there was a shark spotted there.

“I looked behind me and there he was, head out of the water looking right at me and that’s when I just yelled and I started punching him.”

Berryman told 9News he was given a brief reprieve when the shark went to chase the seal, but revealed the seal then tried to use him as a “safety device”.

“That seal actually came to me and started using me as a safety device that’s when I felt the shark again,” he said.

“When I was looking at him, he was doing chomps and I think he was moving up each time. [I was] very lucky.

“The bite marks went down in deep in between some stuff.”

He said a tourist helped him get out of the water and that his two children helped him get back to the car despite his injuries.

Berryman said it was the first attack he had ever seen in 40 years of surfing, and that his fellow surfers marvelled at how big the shark was; bronzy sharks can be up to three metres in length.

“Looking at his head when I was punching him, he was pretty bronzy but the other guy said biggest bloody bronzy he has ever seen,” Berryman remarked.

The dramatic attack was actually captured on video, and Berryman said he was glad he was able to look back at what happened.

“I couldn’t believe it but it was good because I obviously got to see it and I could actually see why I was so scared,” he said.

“It kept coming back, and the size, it was big!”