With the help of a pair of crutches, 10-year-old Raymond “Ray Ray” Senensi III was back on his feet Thursday after a 5- to 6-foot gray and white shark latched onto his leg the day before and dragged him under the choppy waves at his favorite bodyboarding spot, Makaha Beach Park.

Wednesday’s attack was the seventh in Hawaiian waters this year — including one fatality on Maui — and came during the traditional October and November birthing season for tiger sharks, when researchers say females are starving for something to eat.

Just before Senensi spoke to reporters at the Queen’s Medical Center, two surfers told North Shore lifeguards they were chased out of the water by a shark estimated to be 10 feet long at the surf spot Leftovers. It’s the same spot where a 25-year-old surfer from Rhode Island lost his leg and injured his hand during a shark attack on Oct. 9.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources has shark attack data going back to 1778 and Senensi — at 10 years old — is one of the islands’ youngest victims.

There hasn’t been a shark attack in Makaha since March 8, 1969, when a 16-year-old surfer suffered minor injuries after being bitten by a great white, said Bruce Anderson, administrator for DLNR’s Division of Aquatic Resources.

Senensi’s family saw a baby hammerhead swimming at Makaha a month before and had been staying out of the water as a precaution.

“So we didn’t go beach for a while because mom’s terrified,” said Senensi’s mother, Shirita Moreno of Nanakuli.

She told her eight children what to do if they ever encountered a shark and specifically instructed Senensi to “kick him, poke his eye.”

So Senensi instinctively knew what to do when the shark leaped out of the ocean, bit into Senensi’s right leg from his ankle to his thigh and pulled Senensi under: He kicked it with his left leg, prompting the shark to let go.

Because he was still leashed to his body board, Senensi bobbed to the surface and started screaming, “Help me, please help me! I’ve got a bite!” he recalled.

“It just jumped out and grabbed me,” Senensi told reporters at Queen’s. “He dragged me off my board and he pulled me under.”

Kelly Krohne, an off-duty lifeguard captain for Oahu’s west side, was surfing on his day off when he saw Senensi “get lifted half a foot in the water.”

Krohne saw Senensi’s injuries and pushed him into a wave that took him all the way to shore, where lifeguards administered first aid.

Moreno saw the commotion from the park’s shower and immediately thought that Senensi had drowned.

“One of my little boys was screaming and told me it was my son,” Moreno said.

Then close family friend Daniel Kane “said one shark wen’ bite him,’” Moreno said. “I didn’t know what to think. It’s hard to explain because I never expected it to happen to one of my kids. … It could have been worse. The shark was more big than him.”

Senensi, a fourth-grader at Nanaikapono Elementary School in Nanakuli, was scheduled to be released from Queen’s Thursday and and is expected to make a full recovery, Moreno said.

Photos Moreno gave to reporters showed a vicious tear in Senensi’s inner right thigh. Other lacerations down to his ankle indicated tears from the shark’s teeth, she said.

Moreno — and even Senensi’s nurse — have no idea how many stitches were needed to close all of the wounds.

“Just stitches,” Moreno said. “He was really lucky, really lucky.”

She later told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser: “My son really did come out blessed. I say he had an angel. His whole leg could have been gone. He could have been gone.”

Today, mom and son plan to return to Makaha Beach Park to present lei to the lifeguards who treated him on shore.

Senensi had been bodyboarding Wednesday with some of his seven siblings and two calabash relatives, Kane and Kane’s brother, Bronsen.

But when he was bitten before 3 p.m., Senensi was by himself about 50 to 60 yards offshore.

Asked if he ever planned to go back into the water at his favorite bodyboarding site, Senensi just shook his head “no,” bit his lip and started to tear up.

“Just give him time and he will,” his mother said.

Senensi sat in a hospital gown in a wheelchair that included two teddy bears. He was being administered intravenous antibiotics.

Earlier in the day, Anderson said Florida researchers who keep a worldwide database of shark attacks will review photos of Senensi’s injuries, but there’s little doubt that a shark was responsible.

“It was obviously a bite of a large animal,” Anderson said. “It wasn’t a barracuda. It wasn’t an eel. It was something like a shark.”

State and city officials are reviewing their protocols, which include posting shark warning signs until noon the next day following an attack.

Kevin Allen, acting operations chief for Honolulu’s Ocean Safety and Lifeguard Division, said he hopes to get lifeguards more personal watercraft to augment the six that patrol the waters around Oahu.

DLNR on Thursday referred to a statement by Carl Meyer, a shark researcher at the Hawaii Institute for Marine Biology, who said, “Tiger sharks pup during the fall and migrations from the northwestern Hawaiian Islands to the main Hawaiian Islands during this time of year are proven facts. Native Hawaiian oral traditions clearly link the fall months to a risk of shark bites. This traditional knowledge is reflected in our current shark incident statistics. In recent decades almost one third of all shark bites in Hawaii have occurred during the months of October and November.”