A British diver has described how he swam four-and-a-half miles for his life after being circled by a 4-metre (13ft) tiger shark off the coast of Australia.

John Craig, 34, from Sunderland, said he was spearfishing with a friend near Shark Bay in Western Australia when he got into difficulty and lost sight of his boat.

The experienced diver, who moved to Australia two years ago, described his panic as he was left stranded alone in open water.

“I was trying to splash and scream and shout to get my friend’s attention,” he told BBC Breakfast. “All of the splashing, I could feel my heart rate up because I was panicking that I had been left, and after about five or 10 minutes of this I just put my head in the water to check I was still in the same place, and then at arm’s reach there was this huge 4-metre tiger shark …

“It was at that moment I realised, I have just got to forget about the boat and go totally into survival mode.”

He continued: “I just kept my head in the water, watched what the big tiger shark was doing, and it kept coming back towards me. It would circle me and kind of dart in and I just had to use my spear gun to try and fend it off and try and keep it at a safe distance.

“I knew the boat wasn’t coming back, so my only option was to swim to shore, and I knew it was 7.5km [4.7 miles] to get to the beach, and that’s an awful long swim with a 4-metre-long tiger shark.”

Craig, who has worked as a diving instructor for 10 years, said the shark followed him closely as he swam to the shore.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A tiger shark. Photograph: Jeff Rotman/Getty Images

He said: “I started to swim away and then the shark just kept pace behind me, so every time I looked back I could see its huge head right next to my fins and I just had my spear gun pointed at my fins so it couldn’t get close enough to actually touch them, and then it would disappear into the gloom, it would go down and then try and come up below me and up from the sides. It was all because I was panicking.”

After a few minutes, he added, the shark accelerated and started swimming beside him – but it appeared it was no longer trying to attack him. “it was kind of escorting me to shore”.

Craig was spotted from the air and picked up by a boat from the Shark Bay Volunteer Marine Rescue.

Despite his hair-raising experience, Craig said he would not want to put people off Shark Bay as a diving and snorkelling destination.

“These animals are apex predators, but we are not on the menu,” he said. “We need them in the oceans and, as much as it was scary at the time, I can only reflect on how beautiful that big female tiger shark was.”

The tiger shark is second only to the great white in number of attacks on humans, according to the International Shark Attack File from the Florida Museum of Natural History.

They are known to act with curiosity and aggression towards humans, and have been linked to a number of fatal attacks.