Teen fights a shark with her body board

February 3rd, 2010 - 1:26 am ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt  

Wellington, Feb 2 (THAINDIAN NEWS) A teenager in New Zealand didn’t get scared when a shark attacked her. She bashed the shark with her body board, until the shark let her go off to safety. The 14-year-old Lydia Ward was in just waist-deep water at the Oreti Beach on the country’s South Island, when the shark lugged at her hip. The shark was literally on stealth mode, and Lydia said later that she didn’t notice the shark until she was attacked. She was on the beach with her brother.

“I saw my brother’s face and turned to the side and saw this large gray thing in the water so I just hit it on the head with a boogie board,” Ward told National Radio. She also said that she had heard somewhere that the body board was used in one case to fight off a shark attack, so she followed that idea. She bashed up the shark with her body board, until the shark let her go. Then the brother-sister duo fled to safety.

Conservation Department marine scientist Clinton Duffy revealed that the shark was perhaps a broad-nosed seven gill shark, which a species that grows to up to 10 feet long. This type of shark had attacked swimmers at the Oreti Beach in the past too. However Lydia was lucky as she is a former competitive swimmer and regular beach swimmer too, so she didn’t panic and used her brains.

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