I saw it taking my board away and I just started cracking it," he told a crowd that gathered around him once he was back on shore, referring to how he struck the shark.
"I'm totally fine. I've got nothing wrong with me," Fanning said in an interview. "There's a small depression in my board and my leg wrap (was) bitten. I'm just totally tripping out. To walk away from that, I'm just so stoked. Oh man."
Fanning's mother, Elizabeth Osborne, who watched the incident live on television in Australia, wept as she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio the attack was "the worst thing I've ever seen happen to any of my family because it was just there in front of me."
"It was absolutely terrifying. I actually got up and walked across to the television because I just couldn't believe what I was seeing and I thought we lost him," she said in an ABC TV interview. "I went over to the television almost as though I could pull him out of the television. I just wanted to save him really, but there was nothing I could do."
Osborne said she believes Fanning's brother Sean, who died in a car accident 17 years ago, was watching over his sibling.