A 19-YEAR-OLD surfer suffered multiple lacerations on his right leg yesterday when he was bitten by a shark at Yellow Sands Point along the east coast.

Michal du Plessis and four friends were surfing near the Kwelera River Mouth when the shark bit him, injuring his upper thigh and just below the right knee.

Logan Philpott, one of the group surfing with Du Plessis, said they had been in the water for 1½ hours when he heard his friend shout: “Shark! Shark!”.

“I thought he was joking at first, but then everyone else started shouting.

“When I looked, I saw this thing, a tail and a fin, shaking itself against my friend,” he said.

Philpott said Du Plessis was fighting it off, trying to get away from it. He paddled towards his friend and the shark disappeared.

Du Plessis got back onto his surfboard and caught a wave back to shore along with his four friends.

“Then there was blood, a lot of it, covering the rocks.

“So we tied a (surf board) leash around his leg to stop it while others ran to get a car,” Philpott said.

Du Plessis’s friends put him into the back of a van and they sped off to a Crossways Pharmacy, where he was treated and bandaged and then taken to hospital by ambulance.

“When he arrived here he was in a lot of pain and had very deep wounds,” the pharmacy manager said.

He said they had given him medication to ease the pain, bandaged his wounds and handed him over to the Aldersons Ambulance paramedics who arrived soon thereafter.

Du Plessis’ wounds were very deep and it appeared he had been bitten to the bone, Aldersons Ambulance operations manager Alan Leicester said.

“We had to stabilise him and deal with the pain and we also gave him fluids since he had lost a lot of blood.”

The teenager was then rushed to Life St Dominic's Hospital in East London. Leicester said Du Plessis would be going for X-rays to determine whether there was any damage to the bone.

Du Plessis was also expected to undergo surgery for his wounds.

“I have seen sharks close, but seeing it nibble at my friend was very scary,” Philpott said.

It was not clear what kind of shark had bitten him. — Daily Dispatch