A shark has bitten a surfer at Bantham in what many media sources are describing as the “first shark attack in UK waters”.

But The Shark Trust in Plymouth have reassured people, and said it should be described as a shark “bite”, not an “attack”.

Rich Thomson, 30, who teaches chemistry at Kingsbridge Community College, was surfing a long way out from the shoreline last month, when he “felt something grab his leg”.

Mr Thomson said: “I turned around, thinking that one of my friends was playing a trick on me. I looked down and saw a shark attached to my thigh. I reacted quickly, and punched the shark in the head - something I feel a little bit guilty about now.

“When I punched its head, I cut my hand on its rough skin, and the shark let go of my leg. Fortunately I was wearing a thick wetsuit, but my leg was quite bruised, and my hand was cut up from the shark’s rough skin.”

Mr Thomson has said it won’t put him off surfing at Bantham, and is insistent that “it shouldn’t stop anybody from going into the sea. It was a freak occurrence and nothing to worry about”.

It is thought that the shark was a smoothhound shark, roughly two to three feet in size.

“I think it was trying to defend its territory. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. This shouldn’t stop people going to the beach. I was a long way out and it was a freak occurrence,” Mr Thomson added.

John Richardson, conservation officer at The Shark Trust said: “We wouldn’t refer to it as a shark attack, but a bite. It was an unusual incident and nothing to worry about. Because we have such little information, we can only speculate that it might have been a smoothhound shark.

“We haven’t come across something like this before, but the small smoothhound shark is relatively common in UK waters. They have very small teeth that are designed for crushing crustaceans and wouldn’t usually target something larger than themselves.

“It’s an unusual situation - they don’t represent a threat to people. It would have been a case of ‘mistaken identity’,” Mr Richardson added.