Shark attacks French diplomat
Monday 3:09PM
A FRENCH diplomat working in Papua New Guinea has been flown to Australia after a shark attacked him when he was kite-surfing off Port Moresby.

Thomas Viot, 30, was bitten by what he believed was a two-metre tiger shark at a reef off the PNG capital yesterday afternoon.

“I managed to ride back with my kite-surf, it was bleeding very badly and I don't know how but I managed to ride back,” Mr Viot said from hospital in Port Moresby ahead of being evacuated to Brisbane.

“I lost a lot of blood and the leg needs to have surgery.”

The economist, who works for the European Union in PNG, has been in the country for two-and-a-half years and said there were always “plenty” of sharks at the reef, but he did not see the creature before it struck.

He vowed to return to kite-surfing once he had recovered.

“It's not my first surfing accident… I got attacked by a stingray at the beginning of the year, and I always go back,” he said. “By a shark, this was the first (attack) and I hope the last.”