SAN DIEGO -- An Encinitas woman is recovering after she was attacked by a shark last Tuesday at Terramar Beach in Carlsbad.

A day of swimming and taking underwater pictures turned into a frantic experience for Bethany Edmund.

"I felt a sharp pinching pain on my foot," said Edmund.

The pain came from a shark sinking its teeth into her foot. The water she was in was 8- to 10-feet deep, and she thought she had kicked a reef.

"I started swimming sideways on my side and that's when I got hit for the third time, about 30 seconds after I started swimming and that one propelled me about a foot out of the water," said Edmund.

But then Edmund was hit again, and the force caused a big bruise on her leg.

She said, "I literally felt someone took my ankle and yanked me backwards, and I thought it was the swimmers that were near me. So I surfaced and I looked around and said, 'Hey, don't pull my foot, it's not funny guys,' and they were like, 'We didn't touch you; we're 10 feet from you.'"

The shark took another bite on her calf.

"I went and caught the next wave and I felt the same sharp pain on my calf, but this time I got pulled down and shaken around for four or five seconds and I accidently kicked it and it let me go and to that point I was in waist-high water and I started running," said Edmund.

After looking at the pictures Edmund took, one shark expert told 10News the puncture wounds came from a baby Great White shark.

The expert said the shark was about 5- to 6-feet long next to Edmund, who is 5 feet 3 inches tall.

Adult Great White sharks can grow up to 20-feet long, and Edmund's encounter was not the first report of Great Whites in the area.

Last year, triathlete David Martin died when a Great White shark attacked him in Solana Beach.

The expert said Edmund's bright-green toenail polish might have triggered the attack.

"The water was clear enough that the sun could hit my nail polish and reflect it, and so he (the expert) says the first bite was thinking it was a fish and it realized it didn't want me then I wasn't leaving the area and then it got aggressive because maybe that's it's area to hunt," said Edmund.

Lifeguards said they looked for the shark but were not able to locate it, and no further shark sightings have been reported since Edmund's encounter.

In the meantime, Edmund's love for the water has not wavered as she was back in the ocean just two days after the attack.