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A teenage girl told today how she used her surfboard to fight away a shark which had locked its jaws around her leg.
Lydia Ward, 14, had stepped on the slumbering shark as she waded out from a beach in New Zealand and looked down in horror to see that it had sunk its teeth into her thigh.
Realising it could cause serious damage, or even result in her drowning if she lost her footing, Lydia began pounding the shark with her bodyboard - a cut down surfboard.
Telling the tale: Lydia Ward (right) reveals the bite marks in her wetsuit after a shark sunk his jaws into her.
'I was chest deep in the water when it happened,' she said.
'I brushed my foot on something and realised that I had stepped on something that was alive.
'When I first stood on it I tried to tell myself it was a piece of driftwood.' Then, she told her local paper, the Southland Times, her imagination ran amok.
'I thought it was a body - I dunno - it was cold and slippery, but soft, like it gave way a bit.'
She began treading water and tried to move away, but when she put her foot down again it touched the same 'object'.
She glanced in alarm at her 10-year-old brother Alex and, she recalled, he just said 'Whoa!' as the water began swirling around her.
Lucky escape: The teenager fought off the 6ft shark by bashing it with her bodyboard.
Then I saw this massive grey thing twisting in the water.
'I didn't realise it had me in its jaws - I didn't feel anything, then I saw some blood in the water.'
Then, something she had read about sharks came back to her - that if you hit them on the head they might go away.
'So I used my bodyboard to hit it on the head. It released its grip, but because there my blood was in the water I thought it might come back.'
But the shark, estimated to be around 6ft long, did not attack again as she waded back to the shore.
The shark which attacked Lydia is believed to be a broad-nosed seven gill (file picture)
Lydia's wetsuit was left with holes and she had two puncture wounds in her leg, although doctors said they were not serious.
Her mother, Fiona Ward, from the southern New Zealand city of Invercargill, said she was proud of the way her daughter had remained calm during her ordeal.
'When she came out of the water, I thought she was having me on when she told me what had happened - and then I saw the bite marks in her wetsuit.'
Senior Sergeant Bruce Terry of Invercargill police said: 'It was an unfortunate incident, but when sea creatures are stood on, people are always at risk.'
Lydia said she didn't blame the shark for attacking her: 'I think it was probably just defending itself,' she said.
Conservation Department marine scientist Clinton Duffy said the shark was likely a broad-nosed seven gill shark, a species that grows to up to 10 feet (3 metres) long and that has attacked swimmers at the Oreti Beach in the past.
The last time the species attacked a human at Oreti Beach was in 1999, and the young girl victim required 60 stitches, Duffy said.
Lydia, a former competitive swimmer and regular beach swimmer, said she would be sticking to rivers and lakes in the future.
Once bitten: Lydia says she plans to stick to rivers and lakes in the future