An afternoon at the beach didn't turn out quite as planned for a University of Central Florida student last week.

It seems Josh Green was in the water at Cocoa Beach around 3 p.m. Thursday when he felt a yank on his leg, the Jacksonville Sun Times reported. Green then felt several bites and fought back. "I didn't realize it was a shark until I punched it, thinking it was someone messing with me and then felt the face," Green was quoted by Knight News as saying.

Green's punch did the trick and he was able to break free. Once out of the water, he limped toward his friends and was taken to the lifeguard who suggested the bite was consistent with a blacktip shark.

All told, Green needed 18 stitches to close wounds on his calf, ankle and foot. Florida leads the nation and the world in the number of annual reported shark attacks. Fatalities, however, are rare.

"Shark attacks in general are really a nonentity when we think of causes of mortality involved with humans," George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus, told Patch. "It's a lot more dangerous driving to the beach."