A woman who was attacked by a shark told her partner she ‘should be dead’ after waking up in hospital following a life-saving surgery. 

Mangyon Zhang, 56, was attacked by a suspected bull shark while swimming in chest-high water at Bundeena’s Gunyah Beach in Sydney on Friday.

Ms Zhang recalled the moment she realised she had been bitten and the struggle she faced trying staying afloat in the water while waiting for someone to rescue her. 

She said she could not move and tried her hardest not to splash while waiting for someone to notice she was in trouble. 

Her partner Maria Masutti said Ms Zhang felt a strong ‘whoosh’ rip past her in the water which turned out to be the shark as it was attacking her. 

‘She was kind of just having a bit of a leisurely swim and making her way back in and then she said she felt whoosh, that’s how she described it, like a whooshing kind of feeling,’ Ms Masutti told the Daily Telegraph.

After that everything went numb and there was no pain, according to Ms Zhang. 

That was put down to the adrenaline surging through her body but it did not take Ms Zhang long to notice the copious amounts of blood that surrounded her. 

Ms Zhang could not move after the attack and spent the next 20 minutes lying idle in the water until fellow beachgoer Blake Dickson dived in to save her. 

After Mr Dickson and his partner got Ms Zhang to shore they alerted paramedics before she was flown to St George Hospital.

Ms Zhang had serious lacerations and wounds to her leg and she was immediately rushed in for emergency surgery. 

Ms Masutti spent the entire night by her partner’s bedside, waiting for Ms Zhang to wake up. 

‘When she opened her eyes she said “I should be dead, I nearly died”. She started explaining how she felt she was drowning and no-one would get to her,’ Ms Masutti said.

Ms Zhang was hopeful she would be able to keep her leg despite the extensive injuries suffered.  

‘Her legs’ a bit of a mess, it’s gonna be a bit of a long recovery as she’s lost use of her foot so there’s some sort of nerve or muscle damage, but it didn’t hit any arteries, which is good, so she lives to tell the tale,’ Ms Masutti said. 

Beaches along the Sutherland Shire remained closed on Saturday while authorities tried to hunt down the shark responsible for the attack.

Some believe it might be a bull shark that multiple residents have sighted and reported in the area in recent weeks.  

Ms Zhang’s attack is the latest of several to happen across Australian beaches this year. 

Charlize Zmuda, 17, was killed by a shark that attacked her at Bribie Island’s Woorim Beach, north of Brisbane, on February 3.  

Lance Appleby, 28, also went missing after he was attacked by a shark while surfing on the Eyre Peninsula, in South Australia, in January.