A woman attacked by a shark at Sydney\u2019s Coogee beach has uttered her first words after waking from a coma 10 days since sustaining her injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you,\u201d Leah Stewart told her mother and partner after coming out of a coma on Tuesday. She was bitten by a great white shark on 13 June<\/a>.<\/p>\n Stewart has had five days of surgeries \u2013 including an arm amputation<\/a> \u2013 with more to come, her brother Josh Stewart wrote on a fundraising page.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter a week of life-support and repeat surgeries, doctors were able to extubate Leah and reduce her level of sedation to bring her out of the induced coma for a short period of time,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cHer first thoughts were with her daughter \u2026 and wanted to check she was OK.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a lot faster than anyone expected, and for us this feels like a miracle and is everything so many of us have hoped and prayed for over the past week.\u201d<\/p>\n Map of Sydney<\/a><\/p>\n Stewart, a 34-year-old teacher who is a mother to a one-year-old girl, remained in intensive care.<\/p>\n A fundraiser page set up to fund her medical procedures and aid her family had garnered more than $488,000 in donations.<\/p>\n While she remained in hospital, tensions regarding sharks off Sydney\u2019s coast were running high.<\/p>\n A drone video circulating on social media showed what appeared to be a shark close to shore at Bondi beach early on Wednesday morning. The operator said it was a great white, and one had also been spotted on Tuesday.<\/p>\n The beach was closed by lifeguards, the New South Wales<\/a> Shark Smart app posted at 9am on Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not an uncommon occurrence at this time of year, and users of the Shark Smart app will have noticed the increasing detections of white sharks on our tagged shark listening stations,\u201d NSW\u2019s department of primary industries (DPI) said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cWhite sharks are present over a wide range of sea surface temperatures from 10-27C, with data from our tagged sharks indicating that most juvenile white sharks move northward along the NSW coast in late autumn and early winter, with more juvenile white sharks travelling along the NSW coastline from September to November, when the waters are cooler in northern NSW and southern Queensland.\u201d<\/p>\n The DPI separately confirmed a tiger shark was detected at Bondi on Tuesday afternoon, having been tagged at Maroubra earlier that day. Bondi was also briefly closed on Sunday due to a shark sighting, according to Shark Smart.<\/p>\n \u2018We should be world-leading\u2019<\/p>\n Stewart\u2019s attack reignited calls to cull shark populations to protect swimmers, but the NSW premier, Chris Minns, has said great whites could not be targeted as the species was protected.<\/p>\n The premier on Wednesday said NSW would be rolling out \u201cworld-leading\u201d shark drones across more of the state\u2019s beaches.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll be using technology that\u2019s available, but hasn\u2019t been rolled out at scale anywhere in the world, not in California, not in Florida, [nor South Africa] \u2026 places where you\u2019ve got developed world economies, large tourism populations and sharks,\u201d Minns said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be first.\u201d<\/p>\n The premier said there would be an announcement \u201csoon\u201d, including the cost and how Surf Life Saving NSW would operate the system.<\/p>\n The DPI said on Wednesday that one Surf Life Saving drone was \u201cflown at Bondi from 7.30am to 4pm daily\u201d, with another covering Tamarama and Bronte, and a third looking at Coogee and Maroubra beaches.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will be making an announcement shortly about additional measures,\u201d the department said.<\/p>\n