The Guardian20 Jun 2026Macro
Automatically composed with AI from the cited sources
Last Saturday, surfer Leah Stewart, 34, was critically injured by a suspected great white shark between the flags at a patrolled Sydney beach, with her arm amputated. The Australian Shark Incident file records unprovoked incidents have risen from an average of 3.1 per year in the 1950s to 21 per year this decade, while deaths increased from 1.7 to 3.8 per year. Scientists link the rise to factors including warming ocean temperatures expanding bull and tiger shark ranges into Sydney’s waters and recovering seal and whale populations, but shark-net catch data show no significant increase in overall shark numbers.