Female surfer, 35, is mauled by an enormous shark on Shelly Beach NSW

A female surfer has been mauled by an enormous shark on at a popular beach on the New South Wales coast. 

The 35-year-old woman was surfing with a male friend at Shelly Beach in Port Macquarie, on the mid-north coast when she was attacked about 10am.

The beast attacked her right calf and the back of her thigh before her friend punched the beast in a bid to save her.

Emergency services rushed to the beach where the woman was found with significant lacerations to her right leg.  

A female surfer has been mauled by an enormous shark on at a popular beach on the New South Wales coast

The 35-year-old woman was surfing with a male friend at Shelly Beach in Port Macquarie, on the mid-north coast when she was attacked about 10am 

It is the third serious attack NSW Ambulance has responded to in recent months.

The 35-year-old was rushed to Port Macquarie Base Hospital with serious leg injuries, but has since been flown to Newcastle where she will undergo surgery.

Her companion was forced to punch the 2-3 metre juvenile white shark until it let go.

‘The shark wouldn’t release her and so a nearby surfer paddled over and essentially jumped on the shark and started hitting it to make it release,’ Surf Life Saving NSW chief executive Steven Pearce told AAP.

A surfer himself, Mr Pearce says it was a ‘tremendous act of bravery’.

‘We’ve had some really serious and tragic shark encounters over the past couple of months along the NSW coastline so to paddle out of your own safety zone, in to an area where you know there is a large shark, I think is amazing.’

Mr Pearce is urging swimmers and surfers to be ‘shark smart’ as summer approaches, but says the number of daylight attacks in recent times concerns him.

‘As we’ve seen this morning, there are occasions where people can be shark smart and they think they’re doing all the right things, but unfortunately, they’re just in that wrong place at the wrong time.’

The woman was taken to the Port Macquarie Base Hospital in a stable condition

Three paramedic crews and a specialist medical team in the Westpac Helicopter responded to the incident, which a NSW Ambulance spokesman said is the third serious shark attack on the north coast in the past few months.

Duty Operations Manager at NSW Ambulance Inspector Andrew Beverley said paramedics were on the scene within eight minutes.   

‘The bystanders on scene that rendered assistance should be commended,’ he said.

‘They did an amazing job before we arrived.’ 

Lifeguards at Port Macquarie have closed beaches in the area following the attack.

‘Beaches in Port Macquarie will be closed for the day due to a shark attack at Shelly Beach,’ Port Macquarie ALS Lifeguards wrote on Facebook.

Lifeguards at Port Macquarie have closed beaches in the area following the attack

The long stretch of sandy white beach located on the NSW mid-north coast is surrounded by rainforests and popular among families and tourists.

There have been five fatal shark attacks in Australian waters in 2020.

One of them was in WA in January, when experienced diver Gary Johnson, 57, was taken near Cull Island, close to West Beach in Esperance.

In July, a 10-year-old boy suffered shock and cuts when a shark ripped him from a fishing boat about five kilometres offshore from Stanley in northwest Tasmania.