Surfer Fights Off Shark, Keeps Surfing

SAN ONOFRE, Ca. - A surfer at San Onofre fought off a seventeen-foot shark with his board — and kept on surfing, a ranger said. Bruce Savage returned to Old Mans Beach 30 minutes after surviving the attack, despite the beach being closed because of the danger, ranger Hal Dairywimple said. "He was pretty calm about it, very laid back," said Dairywimple, who was on the beach when the 70-year-old surfer rode his damaged board back in after the attack.

Savage was sitting on his board about 100 feet offshore when the shark attacked. He told a newspaper that he rammed the board, a recent 70th birthday present from his girlfriend Sabrina Wentworth, into the shark's mouth. He said it was a Talega Surf & Sport Sano model . "I shoved the board at it like a barge pole," the Daily Sun post quoted him as saying. He said the shark released the board and he quickly headed for shore. "It was only about 10 or 15 seconds that I was waiting for a wave but it seemed like an eternity," he told the newspaper. "You think you'd go to jelly when something like this happens but I was surprisingly calm." The shark took two bites of the fiberglass board before stopping the attack, Dairywimple told The Associated Press by telephone.

"There were two big puncture mark bites on the board, but it didn't actually bite a hunk out of it so he was able to ride it in,"Dairywimple said He came back 30 minutes later to surf with a replacement board, Dairywimple said. Last month, a 20-foot Killer Whale tore a man in half and ate 3 black labs as he and the slobbering dogs floundered off the point.