'You just react': man punches shark to save wife

"When you see the mother of your child, and your support, everything that's who you are, so you just react."

When a great white shark attacked his wife on Saturday, Mark Rapley said he "just reacted"

- punching the shark until it released her, and then help her back to shore.

"Your body reacts to saying get off, get off. So you start punching it, you start thinking amazingly where to punch it and so you're like, I'll just attack the eye or whatever, you just start thinking differently I suppose."

Rapley was surfing with his wife Chantelle Doyle off the coast of Port Macquarie in Australia's New South Wales when the shark attacked.

He described seeing her hit by a force like a punch and being thrown into the water

and says she saved herself by managing to climb back onto the board.

"I was only about two metres away when it grabbed, but if she wasn't on her board by that stage and strong enough to lift herself up, I think it would have dragged her down or she wouldn't be floatable, so I think that was a big part of making sure she was ok."

Rapley says he climbed onto his wife's board so he could punch down on the two to three meter shark.

Doyle is now in hospital with severe lacerations in her leg.

"She is in pretty good spirits, still strong and hopefully all fine from here but long road to recovery I think, yeah."

Beaches in the Port Macquarie area were closed after the incident.