Teen hit shark with boogie board during attack

Lydia Ward fought off the shark with her boogie-board. Photo / Supplied

Fighting off a shark was scary enough, but it was not until she scrambled to shore that Lydia Ward realised just how close her encounter had been.

The 14-year-old was waiting to catch a last good wave on her boogie board at Oreti Beach, near Invercargill, last night when she stepped on something slippery on the sea floor.

"At first, I wasn't quite sure what it was. And I was trying to say to myself it was just a piece of driftwood," she told the Herald.

"Then I stood on it again, and I just looked at my brother's face and he said 'whoa'. And I looked to my side and I just saw this massive grey thing twisting in the water."

Although she and 10-year-old brother Alex could make out the shape of it, Lydia still wasn't sure what she was looking at.

Then it lunged and bit through her wetsuit into her hip.

Lydia thinks the adrenalin flowing through her body might have prevented her from feeling anything.

"So I hit it with the end of my boogie board and that scared it away."

She could see blood in the water and feared it would bring the shark back, "but I couldn't run because I was in the water, so it was quite nerve-wracking".

"I only realised it bit me when I hopped out of the water and saw the bite marks through my wetsuit."

At that point, the area where she had been bitten "sort of just went numb".

Her mother, Fiona Ward, was at the beach waiting for her children when Lydia approached looking a little shaken.

"She's a really cool-headed little girl. There was no screaming or anything, or hysterics.

"She just came up to the car, she looked a bit shaky, and she said 'oh, I've just been attacked by a shark. And I was like 'what?' We didn't really almost believe her. And then she showed us the teeth marks on her wetsuit, and it was ripped in several places.

"And then she peeled it down and she had a couple of puncture marks in her leg."

Mrs Ward was thankful it was not worse, and that her son, who was not wearing a wetsuit, had not been attacked.

Lydia and her brother think the shark was about 1.5m long.

She will be visiting the doctor today to see if she needs any treatment.

She usually goes boarding in the sea only on "a hot day when there's nothing much to do".

"It's sort of put me off the beach, but it's still fine with rivers and lakes. So I'll just stick to them now."

- With NZHERALD STAFF