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Lydia Ward demonstrates the holes a shark made in her wetsuit - Source: ONE News -
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A 14-year-old girl's quick thinking enabled her to escape serious injury after a shark lunged at her in waist-deep water at Oreti Beach, near Invercargill.
Fiona Ward says her daughter, Lydia, was bodyboarding early on Monday evening when the shark attacked, wrapping its jaws around her hip.
The teenager reacted by furiously whacking the shark on the head with her bodyboard until it let her go, Fiona Ward told the Southland Times. They believe the shark was a predatory sand shark.
Lydia thought she had stood on the shark, tried to move away and stood on it again, she says. Fiona says the shark came right out of the water and bit her daughter.
"She's a fairly common-sense wee girl and there was no hysterics, but it really took a bit to sink in that a shark had attacked her."
Lydia says the shark grabbed her right hip, tearing her wetsuit.
"I just hit it with one short, sharp hit of the boogie board," she says.
Her brother, who was swimming next to her, estimated the shark was about 1.5m long.
Lydia was treated for her wounds at home but was later taken to Southland Hospital to get the deeper of two wounds examined, her mother says.
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