San Francisco Frontiers - Mauled Australian swimmer recalls punching shark

Leah Stewart, a primary school teacher, was placed in an induced coma and had part of her left arm amputated after the June 13 attack at Sydney's Coogee Beach.

Stewart decided to go for a late morning swim in the "crystal clear" sea, unknowingly sharing the water with a shark described by witnesses as a great white measuring up to four metres (13 feet) long.

The teacher said she was finishing her swim and approaching the sand when she heard a girl scream.

"I turned, and there was a huge, huge fin behind her. It was massive, and at first I thought, 'Oh, it's a dolphin'," she told Nine Network television's 60 Minutes in a program aired on Sunday.

"I looked at the size of it and I realised, that's not a dolphin. And so we just start screaming at the top of our lungs, just like 'shark, shark, shark'."

She swam a few more strokes, then felt something in the water, and turned around to see it slowly approaching.

"Its face was horrific. I'll never forget its face, it was huge. And its teeth, and its mouth was massive, and its eyes, it's just black little beady eyes. We were looking face to face," Stewart said.

Fearing it would bite her face, she decided she had to punch it.

"I thought, well, which limb am I willing to lose? I'm right-handed, so I decided let's do a left hook," she recounted.

"I just kind of throw my left arm, and it just grabs onto my forearm and rips, rips away my skin, my muscle, everything."

- 'Like fighting a dinosaur' -

Stewart said she was in shock as she looked down and saw her own injured hand.

"The next moment, I feel it grab onto my left thigh, and it rips me underwater."

As the animal pulled her down, Stewart took a big breath, thinking to herself that she had to survive for her young daughter, August.

"I twisted myself around, and I just started punching it over and over and over again, just punch, punch, punch, and it was like fighting a dinosaur," she added.

"It was so big; it was like punching a brick wall. And I think I must have got a really good one in. And so it let me go, and I just kind of popped back up."

Stewart, in her mid-30s, was helped ashore by Charlie Verco, an elite paddleboarder who happened to be in the water nearby. Medics treated her on the beach before she was taken to hospital.

About 10 days after the attack, doctors reduced her sedation and she emerged from her coma.

Australian scientists believe rising ocean temperatures are shifting sharks' migratory patterns, which may be contributing to an uptick in attacks.

A 12-year-old boy died after he was bitten by a shark while swimming in Sydney Harbour in January.

Three divers were fatally mauled in separate incidents between May and June -- two in Western Australia and the third in Queensland.

There have been nearly 1,300 shark incidents around Australia since 1791, of which more than 260 resulted in death, according to a database of shark encounters with humans.

T.Martin--SFF