He noted that he "had to kick it off with my other foot" and swam to a nearby dive boat with his crew that was following behind him for aid.
A long-distance swimmer from the U.K. who survived a shark attack while swimming off the coast of California is speaking out.
Christopher Murray, 50, told CBS News that the incident occurred on Tuesday, Sept. 30 at around 1:20 a.m. when he was about three hours into his open-water swim from Catalina Island to the California shore in an area known as the Catalina Channel.
He said that he saw the shark come from his "right" when his "left arm was outstretched" and was "bitten" by the creature "once," per The Sunday Times. Luckily, he noted, his hand "was moving" rapidly so the shark "didn't really grip on to it."
"It hit me and I shook it off," Murray recalled to CBS News, adding that he had not immediately known that it was a shark attacking him. "And then I felt another attack and a clamp on my right foot."
"I didn't know what it was at this time but I knew I'd definitely been bitten," the swimmer continued. "Then it grabbed ... and the way sharks tend to grab their prey is they'll latch on and then they'll shake, so I had to kick it off with my other foot."
An experienced swimmer, Murray told CBS News that he had a kayaker following behind him along with his coach and support crew on a dive boat -- neither of whom had noticed the shark. He said after kicking off the animal, he swam close to the dive boat, and attempted to continue his trek in the water, but his team jumped in.
“They got the big searchlight, looked down and they could see [the shark] circling. So it was like, ‘You’ve got to get out,’ “ he told CBS News.
“I didn’t feel pain, just adrenaline. I didn’t even feel shocked. I felt annoyed,” he told The Sunday Times. “I was confident I’d finished that swim with all the training and [when I was bitten], I knew that was going to spoil it.”
The Los Angeles Fire Department told KTLA that Murray was pulled out of the water and attended to on their boat before authorities arrived. Capt. Adam VanGerpen told the Los Angeles Times that the man "was awake and talking and sitting up" following the attack and only "suffered mild distress."
The LAFD dispatched four boats to the man's vessel, with the first arriving around 40 minutes after the initial call for help, before Murray was treated by two paramedics.
The swimmer who told The Sunday Times that he had "spent six months training every day" in order to accomplish his latest swimming feat noted that he needed 20 stitches on his hand and suffered significant injuries to his foot in the shark attack.
Although Murray has been walking around on crutches amid his recovery, he's thankful that the injuries were minor. "I was very lucky it didn't hit any artery or tendons," he said. "It was over very quickly."