LIHUE, KAUAI (HawaiiNewsNow) - A Kauai surfer says he's "blessed to be alive" after suffering a shark bite Monday evening.
Mitch Milan says he was surfing off Davidson's Beach on Monday evening when he got bit on his left hand.
“I was outside of the waves, just waiting for a set wave to come in, and all of a sudden, my worst nightmare. Any surfer's worst nightmare,” he said.
The shark bit his hand and took a chunk out of his surfboard.
He'll need plenty of recovery time, but doctors have told him the shark's teeth didn't hit any tendons or major veins.
That's very good news because Milan is a ukulele player — and he can't wait to get back to playing.
Milan was in the water for about an hour when he came "face to face" with the 10-foot-long tiger shark.
"I don’t know how I got my hand out of its mouth but all of a sudden, I’m on my back and then the thing kind of swings around and it’s looking at me, and I’m just going, 'Please God, let me live,'” he said.
Milan says he started screaming and his friend Gary helped him paddled in.
He said he surfs at the beach daily, sometimes twice a day, and hardly sees sharks.
"I consider myself very, very blessed to be alive," he said. "That’s the one thing, when you’re looking at this creature that wants to eat you.”
Davidson's is a popular surfing spot, and the same place where a French visitor was critically injured after a shark bite in April.
Mobile users: Click here for photos of other shark attacks in Hawaii.
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