Tauranga police Acting Senior Sergeant Nigel Ramsden said the man got into difficulties in shallow water.
He said the man was visiting Tauranga with family members, who were being comforted last night.
The death follows the heroic rescue of two men - involving residents and holidaymakers - at Hot Water Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula on Monday night.
One of the men was pulled unconscious from the surf after lying face down in the water for several minutes.
The man and two friends, all believed to be in their 20s and holidaying from Auckland, went into the water about 6.30pm.
Witnesses said they were about 100m out when the man fell off a sandbank and got stuck in a rip.
"He was in difficulty, then the other two tried to go in and help him and it put them in a similar situation," said resident Trevor Knight, whose home is about 300m from the beach.
Realising the men were in trouble, Mr Knight called 111, his wife called the local cafe to sound the emergency siren and his son ran down to the beach to help.
"He was in big trouble. By the time I'd rung the police the first one had given up swimming. He was floating face down in the water. One of the others had managed to get back on the sandbank, the second one was in trouble too."
A passing surfer went to the aid of the worse-off man.
"At that stage he was lifting virtually a lifeless body onto the surfboard," Mr Knight said.
The man had been facedown about two minutes.
Mr Knight's son Paul arrived at the beach to see the surfer struggling to get the unconscious man to shore and waded into the water with another person to help.
"He was foaming out of the mouth, his eyes were rolled back. We carried him 70m up the beach by his shoulders and wrists and he was gone. He was a dead weight."
A visiting paramedic from Taranaki started working on the man while a 15-year-old boy brought the second struggling man to shore.
He, too, was in bad shape.
"He was on his side in the recovery position and would have had no idea where he was," Mr Knight said.
"He would have been on death's door - he was probably only moments away from being in the same state the other guy was."
The third man was able to reach the shore by himself.
Trust Waikato/Hotwater Beach Lifeguard Service chairman Gary Hinds arrived at the beach after getting a call saying two people were being pulled from the water and "didn't look good".
"I started working on one of the guys who was conscious but vomiting up stuff and my partner and a paramedic started working on the other guy [who was unconscious]."
Mr Hinds said the men were lucky the paramedic was there to assist.
"He saw what was going on and went running along and did CPR on one of them because there was no pulse when they got him onto the beach.
"They did CPR and managed to get him to come back around and by that stage all our gear was on the beach so they had oxygen and everything they needed."
A freelance cameraman riding on the Westpac Rescue Helicopter arrived to find hundreds of people on the beach and the two men being cared for by off-duty doctors and paramedics.
One of the people on the beach told him the unconscious man had been under the water for "quite a long time" before he was dragged ashore.
"It was pretty touch and go (when they were dragged ashore).
"They just happened to have luck on their side ...
"There were doctors and nurses everywhere, St Johns were there, so they had the best possible chance of survival because they had all these skilled people there."
The men were airlifted to Auckland City Hospital, but both were released yesterday after making good recoveries.
Mr Hinds said no one had been able to identify the surfer or the teen heroes. The swimmers probably wouldn't be alive without them and the people who performed CPR.
"They were very lucky people because if they didn't have the people who went out and rescued them and experience on the beach they wouldn't be talking to us today,"
He said the two men didn't help themselves by wearing heavy shirts and three-quarter length pants.
"We had three fairly good rips running and a lot of people don't understand that flat water on a beach like means there a rip there, so that's where they had gone in."
- Additional reporting APNZ
