{"id":655503,"date":"2026-06-24T08:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T08:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/655503\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T08:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T08:50:08","slug":"sydney-woman-attacked-by-shark-wakes-briefly-from-coma-to-say-three-words-sharks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/655503\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney woman attacked by shark wakes briefly from coma to say three words | Sharks"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 earlier this month due to a shark sighting.<\/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

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has granted a temporary exemption for aerial surveillance<\/a> of Coogee beach after the attack on Stewart. The beach is about 8km from Sydney airport.<\/p>\n

Shark nets, which are temporarily removed during the winter whale migration season, were due to be reinstalled at the start of September.<\/p>\n

\u2018You\u2019re more intimidating to the predator\u2019<\/p>\n

Questions have been raised over whether the shark sightings could be the same animal.<\/p>\n

Marine biologist and shark expert emeritus professor, Rob Harcourt, said that due to the way sharks move around an area, it was \u201cunlikely\u201d to be the same shark.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do spend a lot of time in local areas, but a local area is quite big. It would encompass the whole of Sydney \u2026 There\u2019s a lot of food around, so there\u2019s probably quite a lot of sharks that are around at this point,\u201d Harcourt said.<\/p>\n

Harcourt said while he understands \u201cpeople are nervous about swimming\u201d, he said \u201cthe risk of being bitten is not immensely great if you\u2019re at a patrolled beach\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t swim alone. You\u2019re less likely to spot an animal that\u2019s coming in, whereas if you\u2019re swimming in a group, there\u2019s more eyes in the water. And I\u2019ll say, you\u2019re more intimidating to the predator,\u201d Harcourt said.<\/p>\n

The 65-year-old was among locals who were ushered away from waters when lifeguards closed Bondi beach on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shark alarm went off just as I was getting to the beach. So with my friends, we all went for a walk because they won\u2019t let you in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harcourt backed efforts to roll out greater shark drones across the state\u2019s beaches, calling it the most \u201ccost effective\u201d way of protecting people \u201cwithout causing any harm to the environment\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman attacked by a shark at Sydney\u2019s Coogee beach has uttered her first words after waking from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-655503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}