This is the terrifying moment two sharks circle near a popular surf beach before one of the predators takes a chunk out of a father’s leg and foot.
Shortly before that bloody encounter, Adam Hoare and his son Matthew, 6, and daughter April, 3, were wading in shallow water on the New South Wales South Coast.
The children’s father sent them to shore after he had noticed large tuna fish swimming through the breakers and chasing small bait fish at Kiama’s popular Surf Beach on Thursday afternoon.
Aerial footage obtained by Daily Mail Australia shows how a tragedy was waiting to happen, with only luck saving the day.
This is the terrifying moment two sharks circled near a popular surf beach before one of the predators took a chunk out of Adam Hoare’s leg and foot
The shark was swimming through a school of tuna fish before it took a chunk out of the father’s flesh: ‘It felt like I was hit with a sledgehammer in the leg.’
As Adam Hoare swam in the waist-deep water at low tide, without his children, he was whacked from behind by a two-metre bull shark, shortly after 4pm.
Mr Hoare, a 35-year-old self-employed painter, felt searing pain in his left leg after he had been under two waves and was returning to shore in ‘whitewashy and sandy’ water.
‘I reckon it was just going straight for the tuna,’ he told the Illawarra Mercury newspaper.
‘It hasn’t actually bitten me, it’s just swum into me.
The 35-year-old self-employed painter felt searing pain after the two-metre bull shark knocked him over as it swum towards tuna fish in shallow water at Kiama’s Surf Beach
The shark took a chunk out of Mr Hoare’s left foot minutes after he had sent his two young children to shore at a popular New South Wales South Coast beach
‘It felt like I was hit with a sledgehammer in the leg.’
Mr Hoare, who lives near the beach, landed on the shark after losing his balance.
‘It was like falling on a slippery rock, it was that solid. It just sort of went underneath me,’ he said.
‘That was it … in two or three seconds it was over.’
The shark encounter survivor, who took himself to Shellharbour Hospital, put his non-life threatening injury down to poor timing.
Mr Hoare felt a ‘sledgehammer in the leg’ as a shark swam into him at this popular surf beach
The shark encounter survivor, who took himself to Shellharbour Hospital (pictured), put his non-life threatening injury down to poor timing.