Kiwi teenager Lydia Ward was waiting to catch the perfect wave on her boogie board when she stepped on something slippery.
She thought it was a piece of driftwood.
Then it lunged at her, chomped through her wetsuit and bit into her hip.
The 14-year-old was with her brother at Oreti Beach, near Invercargill, in the South Island, when they encountered a 1.5-metre shark on Monday night.
"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," Lydia told The New Zealand Herald.
So she hit it on the head with her boogie board, "and that scared it away".
She didn't realise she'd been bitten but saw blood in the water and feared the shark may return.
"But I couldn't run because I was in the water, so it was quite nerve-wracking," she told reporters on Tuesday.
Lydia's mother, Fiona Ward, was waiting on the beach.
"She just came up to the car, she looked a bit shaky, and she said, 'Oh, I've just been attacked by a shark'.
"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."
Lydia required hospital treatment for two of the deeper wounds, but she was not seriously injured, Ms Ward said.
The teenager, a former competitive swimmer, said she'd stick to swimming in rivers and lakes from now on.
"It's sort of put me off the beach."
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