A SURFER has cheated death after being mauled by a 15ft shark while surfing off the coast of South Africa.

Thirty-two-year-old James 'Jay' Catherall, from Kempsey, near Worcester, needed 100 stitches after fighting off the ragged-tooth shark with his bare hands.

The attack happened at about 9.30am South African time yesterday in a river estuary in Morgans Bay, off the Wild Coast area of the Eastern Cape.

Mr Catherall, an ex-pupil of Upton-upon-Severn's former Hill School, was surfing with friends, who applied pressure to his wounds and then rushed him to the nearest hospital.

There, doctors put scores

of stitches in his legs and bottom and told him he was lucky to be alive.

Last night the handyman, who has been surfing since he was 17, was recovering at the backpackers' hostel in Morgans Bay.

His mother Lesley, of Old Road North, Kempsey, spoke of her relief that her son was still alive.

"We just couldn't believe it really he's always in the sea and has swum with sharks and whales before, she said.

We're used to him having adventures as he's all over the place but this has certainly been the scariest.

Mrs Catherall, who is training to be an assessor at Worcester College of Technology, had just returned from work when James's girlfriend, Nicky Garner, 29, called her to tell her what had happened.

She described how James had felt a tug on his board and thought it was the surf.

"He realised it wasn't and it grabbed hold of his surfboard and pulled him down but he whacked it on the head a few times and it let go but then grabbed him on the back."

James has been in South Africa since September 2003 with his girlfriend. The couple are working as wildlife painters and photographers in the parks and reserves of east and Southern Africa for the past three years and they are planning to build a home there.