{"id":479920,"date":"2026-06-16T10:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/479920\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T10:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:24:11","slug":"family-praise-lifesavers-surgeons-after-sydney-shark-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/479920\/","title":{"rendered":"Family praise lifesavers, surgeons after Sydney shark attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a young teacher fights for her life<\/a> after a shark attack, her brother is praising heroic beachgoers and medical professionals for rescuing her.<\/p>\n

Leah Stewart has had her arm amputated after being bitten by a suspected great white shark while swimming in between the flags and close to shore at Coogee Beach on Saturday.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday afternoon, she remained in hospital in ICU in a critical condition, having been through multiple surgeries including the arm amputation, with multiple more procedures needed as she continues her battle.<\/p>\n

Stewart’s brother Josh returned to Sydney from his overseas home of Indonesia as soon as he was made aware of the incident.<\/p>\n

The wider family is not only rallying around<\/a> Stewart, 34, but her baby daughter, aged just one.<\/p>\n

“It’s just awful,” Josh told AAP.<\/p>\n

“We’ve all been coming together to try and do the things we can, focus on all those supports you can put up and wrap around the family.”<\/p>\n

\"Coogee<\/p>\n

Coogee Beach, Sydney. (File image). (Source: istock.com)<\/p>\n

As debate swirled about shark culling<\/a> after the horrific attack, Josh preferred to focus on the heroes who have given his sister a fighting chance.<\/p>\n

“We’d like to give a huge thank you to the doctors, nurses, and support staff \u2026 the care they’ve been giving Leah is just phenomenal,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It was that really swift action all the people on the beach took, lifesavers, first responders, everyone there, the paramedics \u2026 they are why we’ve still got Leah here.”<\/p>\n

Along with a string of donations to a fundraiser \u2013 which has raised more than AU$310,000 (NZ$376,000) in little more than a day \u2013 Josh said he had been inundated with messages of support and love for his younger sister.<\/p>\n

“Leah’s just an amazing person \u2026 so many friends of Leah have reached out,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s been really wonderful, the outpouring of support from the community, we’ve had friends of Leah’s dropping around meals, giving so much care and love.”<\/p>\n

Leah Stewart was swimming close to the shore on Coogee beach when she was mauled by what is believed to have been a 3.5m great white shark. (Source: Nine)<\/p>\n

The attack reignited calls to cull shark populations to protect swimmers, with former prime minister Tony Abbott joining other politicians coming out strongly in favour of the measure.<\/p>\n

NSW Premier Chris Minns noted the great white shark population would not be culled as it is protected.<\/p>\n

He did admit there needed to be a rethink of how the issue of sharks is approached after several bull shark attacks in January.<\/p>\n

Experts said there is little evidence shark culls keep ocean-goers safer.<\/p>\n

Surveillance methods, including employing spotters from vantage points to alert swimmers, were more effective, some experts said.<\/p>\n

Shark nets, another method of separating humans from marine predators, are set to be installed at the start of September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a young teacher fights for her life after a shark attack, her brother is praising heroic beachgoers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-479920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479920","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=479920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}