Shark spits out swimmer who was given 28 units of blood & came within millimeter of severing a major artery

A SWIMMER has revealed the horror moment he was bitten by a shark that came close to severing one of his major arteries in the traumatic attack.

Steve Bruemmer, 62, needed to be given 28 units of blood after the 20-foot great white spit him back out again following the attack last month.

The shark that attacked him could have been one of the biggest in the world, experts say.

Bruemmer recalled the exact moment he was "bit furiously by a shark right across my thighs and my abdomen."

"And it grabbed me and then pulled me up and then dove me down in the water, then it spit me out," he said.

Yet the swimmer still managed to keep his composure to make his escape despite the shark looking straight at him.

"It was looking at me, right next to me. I thought it could bite me again so I pushed it with my hand and I kicked at it with my foot and it left," he said.

"I'm not a seal. It's looking for a seal. We're not their food."

After the daring escape, Bruemmer was rushed to safety by two onlookers who witnessed his terrifying encounter with the predator while he was swimming off the coast in Pacific Grove, California.

Paul Bandy, a cop, and his wife Aimee Johns, a nurse, rushed to administer first aid after hearing Bruemmer's horrifying screams and seeing the water filled with blood.

Emergency services were called from the water and by the time Bruemmer got to shore and onlookers had given him first aid and two ICU nurses and a doctor were at the scene.

The hospital staff members used the clothes off their backs as tourniquets to help stop the bleeding.

He was then transported to Natividad Medical Center for further treatment.

Bruemmer praised the couple who rescued him as "heroes" asking: "How do you get in bloody water with maybe a shark circling beneath you to save a stranger?"