A 13-year-old boy has been bitten by a shark at Port Macquarie on the New South Wales mid north coast. NSW Ambulance says the attack happened just before 6am at Town Beach. Paramedics treated the teenager for bite wounds to his foot, finger and upper leg and took him to Port Macquarie Base hospital. Ambulance spokeswoman Susan George said the boy was in a stable condition. “Amazingly, he was in fairly good spirits when our crew arrived and local surf lifesavers did a great job looking after him when he first came out of the water. “I’d say this young man will have a few stories to tell his mates when he’s well enough to return to school,” she said. Town Beach was closed on Monday morning. It’s the second shark attack at Port Macquarie this year. A 35-year-old woman was badly mauled in an attack while surfing at Shelly Beach in August and was saved by her husband who punched the shark until it let go. Seven Australians have died from shark bites in 2020 including six in unprovoked attacks – more than any year since 1934. While the total number of shark bites is in line with the annual average over the past decade, it has prompted experts to consider whether the La Niña weather event, associated with cooler sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific, may be affecting where sharks search for prey. According to the Australian Shark Attack File, it has been 86 years since six people last died from unprovoked shark bites in a single year. In 1929, nine people died from unprovoked shark bites in Australia – a record that preceded debate about introducing the first shark nets at Australian beaches several years later.