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A teenage surfer bitten by a shark at a South Australian beach has described how he “flicked it off” and “legged it back to shore”.

Oliver Tokic-Bensley, 16, was bitten on his foot while surfing on Good Friday near his family beach house at Middleton, 80km south of Adelaide.

The year 11 student, who has been surfing his “whole life”, had been in the water for about 10 minutes, 100 metres from shore, when the shark tugged him off his surfboard.

“It came from behind me,” Oliver said.

“I flicked it off, almost the same that you do when a crab bites your foot … and then I don’t know if that really did anything, but it let go and I just legged it back to shore.”

He turned to see the shark’s fin then paddled at speed, holding his board, until a wave formed and he could catch it in to shore to check his wounds.

“I just started taking photos to show my mates … it wasn’t that bad, I had no pain or nothing, I was just like, I’ve got to get a photo of it,” he said.

“They were shocked as well, because I’ve surfed down there with most of them and again nothing like that’s happened.”

The teen said he was bitten at about 4.30pm and his sister called his parents before his father, Andrew Bensley, drove him to Victor Harbor hospital in a hurry.

Oliver said his wounds were washed and disinfected, X-rayed and bandaged. He has been taking antibiotics and avoiding putting weight on the foot but hoped to return to the water soon.

“It should only be like two weeks maybe, it shouldn’t be that long,” he said.

Oliver believed a bronze whaler shark had bitten him after seeing only its fin.

Middleton beach surfers spotted a bronze whaler two weeks beforehand and had been bumped by the sharks in recent years but bites were “incredibly rare”, according to citizen science group Shark Watch South Australia.

The beach’s last recorded shark bite in the Australian Shark Incident Database was in June 2014, when a white shark bit a 15-year-old boy on the leg.

South Australia has accounted for just 36 of Australia’s 560 shark bite reports in the database from 2000 to 2025, of which four occurred in the month of April.

Most of the state’s bites involved white sharks, with bronze whalers involved in just two. A surfer was also involved in one of those, in October 2025 near Kangaroo Island, about 150km from Middleton.

Concerns about shark attacks rose in January when New South Wales saw four bites in 48 hours, leaving one 12-year-old boy dead. Experts warned heavy rain and murky waters had brought small fish into shore, attracting sharks.

Oliver said a windy day at Middleton had churned up the water, making it more difficult to see.

“It was in the evening, it was sort of a stormy, choppy day, it was really murky and stuff, so I’ll probably avoid that,” he said.

“I’ve gone out a couple of times when it’s been like that and nothing happened, so I just didn’t really think anything of it.”