Shark beheaded to free man

A SHARK'S jaws had latched so tightly onto a man's leg yesterday that its head had to be cut off to free him.

The shark had been hauled aboard a fishing boat 90 nautical miles off Coolangatta, on the Gold Coast, when it bit the 20-year-old Sydney man about 7.30am.

The mako shark, which was three metres long and weighed 90 kilograms, whipped around and grabbed the man's right calf after he stepped on its tail.

"There are a few hands on the deck and they could not release the shark from the leg at all until they had cut the shark's head off," said a spokesman for RACQ CareFlight, which was called to fly the man to hospital. "It was locked on. The bite has gone down to the bone. I've seen a photo of the wound and it's pretty messy."

The man was in a stable condition in Gold Coast Hospital last night after emergency surgery.

The tuna fishing vessel was bound for Mooloolaba, on the Sunshine Coast, when the incident happened.

A paramedic, Darrin Hatchman, said the man was lucky to be alive because the bite narrowly missed arteries and major blood vessels and at the back of the knee.

"If it had have been a couple of millimetres either way, and a little bit more of a voracious bite, it would've been a real mercy dash to stop him from bleeding out," Mr Hatchman told ABC radio.

The man was winched into the rescue helicopter about 10.40am in three- to five-metre swells.