A French diplomat working for the European Union in Papua New Guinea was airlifted to Australia on Monday after a shark attacked him when he was kite-surfing off Port Moresby. Thomas Viot, 30, was bitten by what he believed was a two-metre (6.5 feet) tiger shark at a reef off the PNG capital on Sunday afternoon. \"I managed to ride back with my kite-surf, it was bleeding very badly and I don\'t know how but I managed to ride back,\" Viot told AFP from hospital in Port Moresby ahead of being evacuated to Brisbane. \"I lost a lot of blood and the leg needs to have surgery.\" The EU economist has been in PNG for two-and-a-half years and said there were always \"plenty\" of sharks at the reef, but he did not see the creature before it struck. He vowed to return to kite-surfing once he had recovered. \"It\'s not my first surfing accident... I got attacked by a stingray at the beginning of the year, and I always go back,\" he said. \"By a shark, this was the first (attack) and I hope the last.\"