EAST LONDON, South Africa — A backpacker filming surfers on South Africa's east coast captured another sort of adventure story this week — rare footage of a great white shark attack.

AP Ainslie with his surfboard, indented with the teeth marks from a great white shark

A video recording of the incident, considered by shark experts to be unique, shows a second shark also lining up to attack 15-year-old Shannon Ainslie, a surfer from East London.

Ainslie was surfing with his brother and friends on Monday when he came face to face with one of the sharks.

"I was just catching a wave when the shark came up and made a grab for me. Next thing I knew I was underwater and came face to face with the shark," he told Reuters.

"I looked straight into its eyes and thought I was dreaming."

Ainslie escaped with a severely injured right hand, almost losing a middle finger that hung by just a thread.

"I was in a state of shock and just prayed to God to let me live," he said.

His ordeal was caught on film by Canadian backpacker Sean Smith, who just happened to be videotaping the surfers.

Perhaps the first film of a shark attack on a surfer, the tape is brief but stunning.

In seconds, Ainslie is thrown from his board as the 4-meter (13-ft) shark attacks from the left.

A dorsal fin can be seen towering the wave as the shark's jaws clamp the back of the board and drag it under the water.

Corbis What Ainslie came face to face with

The second shark is clearly silhouetted against a breaking wave moving in from the right toward the surfboard, but it drops away at the last moment.

"I am very, very surprised to hear that there was a second shark there. It is very unusual for great whites to hunt in pairs. They don't hunt together, they only hunt alone," said Willie Maritz, the chief of marine services in East London.

The tape's scientific value is enormous, he told Reuters.

Maritz said sharks often attack surfboards because they mistake them for seals, sea turtles or large fish.

"It was probably just tasting and decided it was something it couldn't eat because it immediately swam away," he said.

There have been three fatalities over the past five years from shark attacks in the East London area.

Maritz said July was the most dangerous month for surfing off East London, when great whites and other sharks follow migrating schools of sardines north before returning to the seal colonies off the Cape Peninsula.