Shark attacks French diplomat
Monday 3:09PM
A FRENCH diplomat working in Papua New Guinea has been flown to Australia after a shark attacked him when he was kite-surfing off Port Moresby.
Thomas Viot, 30, was bitten by what he believed was a two-metre tiger shark at a reef off the PNG capital yesterday afternoon.
“I managed to ride back with my kite-surf, it was bleeding very badly and I don't know how but I managed to ride back,” Mr Viot said from hospital in Port Moresby ahead of being evacuated to Brisbane.
“I lost a lot of blood and the leg needs to have surgery.”
The economist, who works for the European Union in PNG, has been in the country for two-and-a-half years and said there were always “plenty” of sharks at the reef, but he did not see the creature before it struck.
He vowed to return to kite-surfing once he had recovered.
“It's not my first surfing accident… I got attacked by a stingray at the beginning of the year, and I always go back,” he said. “By a shark, this was the first (attack) and I hope the last.”
Obviously tiger sharks like the frogs legs for a treat now and then.
(Glad the onion sucker is ok tho 
)
Just realised this is the same bloke that copped a sting ray barb a while ago.. what has he been doing to pizz of sea creatures so much!?
Bloody unlucky.
Hi,
we just got word back from the locals and they are 99% sure it was a barracuda attack not a SHARK.
The guy is an experienced kiter.
We all hope he gets well and this was his last encounter with any vicious fish.
Thats just a graze,,,,,rub some lime juice on it and get back out there sunshine.
wow, crazy how fishing stories go. add in PNG and the media "spin" and thats what you get i suppose
I saw thomas in hospital last night, no doubt it is a pretty ugly wound. He was lucky to get back to shore by himself and very fortunate he had help on hand to get him back to the city.
The attack happened at 5pm on a very overcast rainy day, sharky conditions for sure.
2m tiger?? the photo speaks for itself really.
there were two attacks at baliaan whilst i was in bali a day appart dont no if they were kiting just surfing i think .ther is a bad ass mako that hangs out there likes eat ing things that are splashing around on the surface
I kited out to the reef with thomas when I was in png...it's a long tack out there ...that would have been a hard ride back in with that wound for sure...hope you heal quick
Nobody saw the fish but the guys who were there seem to think it was a shark so I was loath to second guess them.
And yes, he got a stingray barb right through his leg earlier this year. Not to mention a bad gash about 2 months ago and a punctured lung about a year ago.
The medevac pilots know him by name now 
I doubt a cuda could get jaws to both sides of a leg?
But maybe they breed em bigger up there.
Nasty wound - lucky it wansnt worse.
the day before is the best photo hope he get well fast and buy a lotto ticket cause all your bad luck seems to be on the water .
Oooohh...lah...lah!
she touched my ding ding dong...... ooooohhhh, my trah lah lah.
Whoa! 
Er..
I approached this as being tres amusing as it seemed the injuries weren't that bad after the alleged 'shark' attack and may have in fact been a pizzed off guppy.
However in those are some gnarly pinstripes on his leg there! (Worst was the 3rd pic - I just couldn't stop staring at it 
)
Oops, sorry Frogman. Good luck with repairs. 
Best to try somewhere else? It seems even Nemo or Dory will avago if they see a Frenchy in the Pacific.
EDIT: Note to guy in 3rd pic - far left. You are doing it wrong.. you need a harness, bar, water.. you are just doing it wrong!
ROFL! It does look like he's makin some mashed spuds doesn't it!?
Man - that 2nd gory pic reminds me of my 12th birdee. Running into a razor sharp fully splayed star picket (whacked into the primary school oval with a metal hammer
) then falling over it and cleaving open my entire thigh muscle was tres fun.
Pity digi cameras and SB didn't exist then. Was tasty to see.
Got a BMX for 12th birfdee, on the same day I met the X picket. One week later (with 18 stitches in) was going over home made jumps pedaling one leg only!
Ha ha - wish i was half as tuff now as when i was 12.[}:)]
Still shudder every time i see an uncapped star picket!
Wonder if poor Frogman will ever look at a surf n turf on the menu again?
At least that Tigress Shark, or whatever they call them over there, looks sorry for what she's done
I caught up with Thomas the other day. He has had many surgeries and will be out of the water until at least 2012. The doctors removed 3 teeth from his leg and an expert was able to identify the culprit that attacked him as an oceanic white tip shark.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_whitetip_shark
Oceanic white tips are bass ass...Got chased out of the water at Cloudbreak on an eight foot day, a very hair raising experience. The fin was as big as the gunwhale on the boat, probably about a 12 footer. Once safe in the boat we followed it right into the lineup to see if it would go away, it just hung around. Killed a great session....
Good thing that came out of it was we noticed a pod of sperm whale out to sea and headed out to take photos. As we got closer the Fijian boat driver started to get spooked and insisted we turn around. I managed to snap a couple of lame shots but was happy to see them. We turned and headed back to Tavarua, and after about 300 meters we turned back around to look at the whales again and up from behind the pod a blue whale breached out of the water. It dwarfed everything we had ever seen in our lives, made us feel so insignificant and small. The sperm whales looked like guppies compared the that creature. Twenty years on now my friend and I still think about that moment and how insane it was to witness that.
I guess I can thank that big ass shark for such a great experience....
