Most people, surviving a traumatic tiger shark attack in a foreign country, would thank their lucky stars and catch the first flight home.
Not Sam Judd. When the wounds were barely healed, he went back to the site of the attack and went surfing.
It's that mixture of grit and sheer bloody-mindedness that has seen the organisation he co-founded - coastal litter and freshwater charity Sustainable Coastlines - rise from a few mates picking up rubbish on the beach to something of a juggernaut.
It runs large-scale coastal clean-up events, educational programmes, public awareness campaigns and plants out the banks of New Zealand's beleaguered waterways. The charity has even gone international, with chapters in Hawaii and Papua New Guinea.
At first, Judd did it the hard way: "I survived those early years by eating cheap, grovelling around, spearing fish to eat and occasionally finding casual work," he laughs.
After two and a half years of running the charity, he was finally able to put himself on the payroll. The profile of Sustainable Coastlines was also building rapidly and clean-up events saw lots of eager volunteers. He also began work with offenders, prison inmates and those with community service sentences.
In 2012, Judd applied for an AMP Scholarship and won it, receiving funding to further his work and support himself. Applications for this year's version have opened and will stay open until August 13 (go to amp.co.nz for more information).
The scholarship prefaced a good time for Judd. He won the Sustainability Award at the Sustainable Business Network Awards. He was the supreme winner of the government's Green Ribbon Awards. He was also named Young New Zealander of the Year.
It had been just four years after Sustainable Coastlines was launched and a testament to Judd's relentless drive to attain his dream.
The achievements and accolades were apt recognition, but Judd has not taken his foot off the accelerator one bit: "Our strategic focus is capacity development, much of which is done with little funding. We have to innovate. Which is why we built this."
"This" is the brand new Sustainable Coastlines Flagship, a handsome headquarters in Wynyard Quarter, Auckland, a public education exhibit and training centre where they pass on what they have learned.
It's a $2.8m building, built for just $240,000, constructed 80 per cent out of reclaimed materials - shipping containers, pallets and reclaimed timber. Much of it was prefabricated by prison inmates of Paremoremo prison. Other building materials were donated.
"We had incredible in-kind support. Over 2000 people helped to build this," he says. "It's epic."
It has composting toilets and will soon be fitted with solar panels - completing the requirements for a 'living building', one requiring no power and creating no waste, while its construction has no environmental impact.
As usual with Judd, it was just one of several simultaneous projects during the past 18 months. Another he is particularly proud of is the Puni Rivercare project, a restoration and riparian planting initiative between Sustainable Coastlines, Waikeria Prison and five Te Awamutu marae.
In a magical synergy, seedlings grown in the prison nursery by mostly Maori inmates of Waikeria Prison have been planted on the banks of the Puni River, one of the most polluted in the country, by young Maori employees of Puni Rivercare. The scale, and ambition, are jaw-dropping.
"Now we're getting contracts from farmers to plant trees on their land. It's just awesome.
"Today that organisation has seven fulltime young Maori employees, and 11 for the planting season. Last financial year they made a profit of $154,000. They will plant 125,000 trees this season. Next year, they'll plant 200,000 trees, all grown on their marae."
Judd says the ultimate goal is to plant two million trees a year - a million seedlings grown in Waikeria Prison and a million out of the nurseries of the five marae.
"We'll keep that up for the next 40 years. The locals want their river back so their kids can swim in it and they can gather kai - like they used to do."
Judd says working with offenders has myriad benefits: "For every prisoner who doesn't go back to prison because you sussed them out a job, that saves $100,000 a year for the taxpayer. Also, anyone with a conviction is automatically classed as at risk of long-term benefit dependency, and you can track what that costs over a client's lifetime.
"What we're doing is stopping re-offending, training offenders, getting reduced labour costs for this initiative, reducing tree costs, improving biodiversity, air quality and water quality, improving soil stability, sequestering carbon - all of that's happening with just that one activity."
Speaking about his 2012 AMP Scholarship, Judd is grateful for the leg up: "I'm part of an AMP Scholarship alumni so full of talent - so many Kiwis are practical and technical innovators.
"AMP backs that talent, and that is so cool, because it's so diverse. It's flexible money, it's not a difficult application process. I'd encourage people out with big ideas to just put it out there and give it a crack."
For more information: amp.co.nz
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