Leah Stewart suffered severe and life-threatening injuries with multiple bites across her arms and legs.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeah Stewart is a dedicated and loving mother, a passionate teacher and Coogee local,\u201d her family said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a family we are shocked and devastated that this could happen to our beloved partner, daughter, and mother who is so full of life and energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coogee is a popular eastern suburbs beach, near the iconic Bondi Beach. <\/p>\n
Sydneysiders have been left stunned by the attack.<\/p>\n
Beaches in Sydney\u2019s eastern suburbs reopened on Monday morning, two days after the attack.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the brother of a surfer who was killed by a shark last year is supporting widespread drone use on Sydney beaches following the attack.<\/p>\n
Support for drone surveillance<\/p>\n
Mike Psillakis lost his twin brother, Mercury, in September 2025 when he was fatally attacked by a shark while surfing near Dee Why.<\/p>\n
The 57-year-old surfboard shaper from Sydney\u2019s northern beaches told the Today show on Monday morning that drones were the \u201cway to go\u201d when it came to protecting beachgoers.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s really concerned regarding this situation, and I think we can take steps to minimise the interactions between sharks and humans,\u201d Psillakis said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think AI drones are the way to go. My brother, and the attack on Saturday, could have been prevented by drones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Psillakis said losing access to Sydney beaches would equate to a loss of \u201cidentity\u201d and \u201cculture\u201d and also expressed concern for local tourism should Australians not be able to safely access beaches across the country.<\/p>\n
Sydney’s Coogee Beach is a popular spot for swimming. <\/p>\n
His views are supported by Leonardo Guida, who has worked in marine conservation and sustainability for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
Guida told NewsWire there would be \u201cno silver bullet\u201d when it came to shark management, but advancements in drone and AI technology could be \u201creally useful\u201d in harm minimisation.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrone technology is really useful in environmental conditions where the water is relatively clear and you do get a quite clear visual of the species,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s currently research being conducted into AI which can allow drones to automatically detect what species is swimming in the water based on its size and shape and the way it moves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen combined with weather patterns and shark movement, all of these factors could be used to develop some kind of alert system or predictive model.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guida said advocacy for culling, which has exploded after the Coogee attack, was factually flawed.<\/p>\n
\u201cCulling has been around for nearly 100 years as a state-sanctioned programme, and it is, by all measures, ineffective,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to sharks, the knee-jerk reaction is to take an eye for an eye. We assume if there\u2019s less of them, there\u2019s less chance of a bite. Unfortunately, that\u2019s not the reality of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, the ocean is working as it should and the more people are aware of this, the better informed we can gauge the risks we\u2019re willing to take when we go into the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
Surf Life Saving NSW chief executive Steven Pearce told Channel 7\u2019s Sunrise most patrolled beaches along the NSW coast were also monitored by drone pilots during the summer months, but patrols in winter months are \u201cscaled back\u201d significantly.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the summer, we do around 80 locations up and down the coastline, but that\u2019s scaled right back in winter because we just don\u2019t see the population and visitation down at the beaches,\u201d Pearce said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do about 13 beaches up and down the NSW coast [in winter].\u201d<\/p>\n
Pearce said Surf Life Saving NSW runs more than 100,000 flights every year, but Coogee Beach was one of the only areas with flight restrictions imposed on pilots due to it being within a flight path.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we had drones flying there, we would have been able to see a lot of sea creatures \u2026 I\u2019m not saying it wouldn\u2019t have happened but I\u2019m saying the water clarity was so great that it would have been quite easy to spot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They said she has more surgeries scheduled for the coming days. A GoFundMe campaign to help in her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1443,110107,15153,89,7972,239293,181,15356,18791,6871,305,42,86845,190837,101,424,6178,43,10903,7971,6934,1734,1361,40,38,41,39,4741],"class_list":["post-478491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-about","tag-amputated","tag-arm","tag-attack","tag-beach","tag-coogee","tag-details","tag-emerged","tag-fighting","tag-has","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-horrifying","tag-leah","tag-left","tag-life","tag-mother","tag-news","tag-popular","tag-shark","tag-stewart","tag-sydney","tag-that","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}