More here"We were just surfing and (Hannah) was probably five or 10 metres out in front of me," he said.
"The next thing I know she screamed and disappeared under the water.
"She came up and was fighting the shark and hitting it and screaming 'help me, help me, help me'. We didn't see it coming.
"It grabbed her surfboard and dragged that under and she still had her leg rope on and it dragged her under again.
"She kept it together. There was blood everywhere and I didn't know whether it was going to try and bite her again.
"She's 13 years old. She made me very proud. She gave me the strength to stay there with her in the water - when I saw the way she was fighting it off.
"She was scared but she fought it off. She wasn't going to let it beat her.
"I was stunned - I didn't know what to do. She was the one who pulled me through it. She's the hero. She's my hero."
Legendary shark hunter Vic Hislop' has a theory about the spate of recent Shark Vs Human attacks and it screams out "Make Me Into A Movie!" Sharks are, according to Hislop, running low on their usual diet of assorted varieties of sea kittens, and view humans are "an alternative food source" :A snorkeller has suffered 40 puncture wounds to his leg and abrasions to his hand after he punched a shark that was biting him.
The 23-year-old man was snorkelling under the Windang Bridge about 10.45am when he felt a tug on his leg, a NSW Ambulance spokeswoman said.
He turned around to see a flurry of white water and "punched at a brown shape", believed to have been a bull shark.
Mr Hislop said 200 years of over-fishing Australian waters had turned the attention of big sharks to "gentler" prey such as dugong, turtles and dolphins.Boring experts dismiss Hislop's theory :
"That's what's in their stomach now every day," he said on Macquarie Radio today.
"As the turtles disappear, which is inevitable, and the dugong herds disappear, humans are next in line on the food chain.
"It will definitely get worse."
But Tarango Zoo shark biologist John West rejected the claim saying if any species behaviour was changing it was humans.As long as the sharks believe that, too.
He said there may have been a rise in the number of shark sighting but that was only because more people were spending more time in the water.
Population increases and wetsuits that allow people to swim through the colder months would increase the chance of someone coming into contact with a shark.
"It may sound logical that over-fishing would lead to more attacks but it has no basis in fact," he said.
When it . . . banged straight into me, I knew it was a shark. I was more concerned about getting out of its mouth because it was dragging me backwards under water.Sharks are supposedly quite the cowards, and are not used to their prey fighting back. Particularly not prey that goes the eye gouge.
“I just went down to the beach, everything was nice and calm and then all of a sudden it was like a boat taking off with all the wake; but we could only see the fin and the shadow...”But wait a minute, there seems to be a bit of a dispute about whether or not sharks are actually aggressive. Apparently sharks are not aggressive, they're just "curious".
Mangan, who owns the Boatshed Cafe on the seafront corroborated Leahy saying, “I definitely know about the pelican being eaten, because the helicopter pilots who saw it happen come for coffee in my cafe. They said it was a White Pointer.”
Mangan was worried about his business. “I rely on people coming swimming and then eating at my cafe. The shark has been hanging around for over a week. I hope it goes away soon,” he said.
“Sharks, unfortunately for us, don't have hands, and so use their mouth to feel. They are curious and sometimes soft bodied animals, like us, can be damaged.”Matt appears to be saying that if sharks, uh, had hands, they would not be biting off so much of you when they came up to see what you felt like (?).
“They could just be curious but because it's a shark, people think it is being aggressive...”
"I'm just an ordinary working man, a family man, who just wanted to survive very, very badly, at all costs...
"I went straight into its mouth, front onwards, and my shoulders, my head and one arm went straight down into its throat and I could feel the teeth crunching up and down on my weight vest...
"It knocked the [air] regulator out of my mouth so I didn't have any oxygen, and then it started to shake me and I thought 'Oh no, I know what happens when they shake you. That's when they cut off the biggest piece of meat they can get'.
"I put my left hand down the side of its face because my head, shoulders and right arm were right down in its throat … half my body was in its mouth.
"I felt down to the eye socket, and with my stiff fingers I poked my fingers into the eye socket, which the shark reacted to in a way that [it] opened its mouth a bit and I tried to wriggle out."
Eric should be out of hospital by the weekend.
And those deals, easily worth six figures, are just for Australia.
"Sometimes people find themselves in a period of crisis, be it due to a personal event, a natural disaster or another unavoidable situation. Often, in what can be a time of emotional vulnerability, they find themselves the focus of media attention and, understandably, do not feel equipped to deal with it."
American television and cable networks have been on the phone to Miller trying to cut their own deals. But Miller is believed to be holding out for the Dame Of Pain, Oprah Winfrey, before he signs away US rights to Eric's story.
The international bidding rights war is now officially on.
Considering the circulation of the tabloid magazine and the potential audience in Australia for a one hour television special where Eric would tell his tale, along with the mandatory book deal, and perhaps a few advertising gigs (selling tuna?) he's going to be a millionaire.
Miller's usual strategy is to score a big fee locally, in Australia, and then pick up five figure, and the occasional six figure deal, wherever he can find them in the rest of the world. It all adds up.
Abalone divers are today heading back into southern NSW waters where the shark attacked Mr Nerhus, saying the incident would not stop them from working.
John Smythe, an abalone fisherman from the tight-knit Eden diving community, said divers would be taking extra precautions but the attack would not stop them from diving today.
"I think it [the shark attack] will make people think, but I don't think it will make people suddenly walk off the job," Mr Smythe told ABC Radio.
"We're in their [the sharks'] domain and you have to respect that. We do take precautions. If you are diving in spots like Cape Howe ... your boat will be sitting directly above you and when you do your ascents and descends you'd be looking.
"So to put it in perspective, you can make your diving a lot safer but nevertheless you are in their [the sharks'] domain."
Mr Smythe, who was on a recreational dive north of Eden at the time of yesterday's attack, says seal colonies in the area often attract white pointer sharks.
"In 32 years of diving I've seen two big whites just cruising in the distance ... I have seen a big shark at this time of year and one in the middle of winter," he said.
"Cape Howe is one of those particularly sharky spots, there's a lot of currents going on along there, it's basically the start of the Bass Strait and there are seal colonies.
"It's common to see seals with their heads bitten off, white pointers just come in for a bit of a taste."
Mr Smythe said the abalone diving community agreed with shark specialists that the shark probably mistook Mr Nerhus for a seal.
"When I found out that he was diving on the bottom on the rocks, where it's a very weedy habitat, and mentioned that to other divers, the comment straight away was that he was mistaken for a seal," Mr Smythe said.
"No doubt the shark sensed movement in the reed and went in to discover that this guy would put up a fight, not like your ordinary seal."
The shark had Mr Nerhus's head in its jaws, but marine experts say it chewed him then spat him out when it realised he was not a seal.
Mr Nerhus, 41, a black belt in karate who has been diving professionally for five years, was scouring reefs at Cape Howe, near Eden, with his son, Mark, 16, when the shark pounced about 9.30am.
In an instant the shark snapped its jaw around Mr Nerhus's head with such force it crushed his face mask and broke his nose.
He fought to break free but Mr Nerhus's torso was then pulled into the shark's mouth and it bit into the diver's sides.
"He was actually bitten by the head down," said a friend and fellow diver, Dennis Luobikis. "The shark swallowed his head."
But the white pointer, probably weighing about 500 kilograms, would not have liked the taste...
"They go for rich, fatty meat, like seals, and with his black diving outfit moving around in the reef [Mr Nerhus] would have looked like a seal. Humans are not a part of their diet"
"When it bit into this scrawny human being it would probably have thought 'yuck' and let him go."
Mr Nerhus, who was recovering in Wollongong Hospital last night, told friends and rescuers he had used his abalone chisel to hit the shark about the head and poke its eye to escape...
"Everything went black," Eric told his rescuers, who hauled him out of the water and into a boat for the hour long trip back to shore.
He escaped with deep puncture wounds to the chest and shoulder and a broken nose. His weight vest prevented more serious injuries.
"He came up to surface and was going 'oh help, help there's a shark, there's a shark'. I went over and there was a big pool of red blood and I pulled him out of the water," Mark said.
Another fisherman, Reece Warren, said: "He had bite marks all around his chest. He said 'the abalone are all right down there'."
Paramedics said they were amazed by the composure of Mr Nerhus, who declared "I'm all right" as he arrived at Wollongong Hospital.
Fellow diver Dennis Luobikis said it was a miracle his friend had lived.
"Eric is a tough boy, he's super fit," he said. "But I would say that would test anyone's resolve, being a fish lunch. He's up and about and he's sore and sorry."
There has been a rash of sightings of great whites – also known as white pointers – in recent weeks due to unusually cold waters off Eden...
"He's a black belt in karate, which would give you a bit of discipline. If you panic you're in trouble.
"The eyes [of a shark] are a vulnerable spot. It would have been an instinctive reaction to find the eyes. This won't faze Eric. Now it will just give him the opportunity to get his shirt off and show his scars."