rniquet for Ismail using a leg rope and another onlooker phoned for an ambulance.

A pair of teenagers helped Ismail climb into Dunn's SUV and they drove along the beach to meet an ambulance.

 I had a heap of people laughing, keeping me alive, keeping me positive in the back,  Ismail said.

 I gave a few knuckles to the people there, because I was feeling good,  Ismail added.  I started to feel like I (was) going to make it. 

Four days after Ismail was attacked, 63-year-old swimmer Greg O'Neill was fatally mauled by a large white shark. O'Neill was attacked off Sorrento Beach in Perth's northern suburbs, around 250 miles south of Geraldton.

Ismail said he intends to return to the surf as a bodyboarder.

There have been five fatal shark attacks in Australia this year.

Three spearfishing divers were killed by sharks off the Australian coast in four weeks over May and June. In January, a 12-year-old boy died in a hospital days after he was mauled by a bull shark in Sydney Harbor.

Australia has averaged between two and three fatal shark attacks a year since 2000, according to the Australian Shark Incident Database, a partnership including Taronga Conservation Society Australia, Flinders University and the New South Wales state government.