Leah Stewart lost her arm in a great white shark attack at Sydney’s Coogee beach. Follow today’s news live Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Watt says fur seal death from H5 bird flu ‘very serious’, but government prepared Murray Watt , the environment minister, said the confirmed death of a fur seal, was a “very serious development”. What we’ve been doing over the last couple of years is trying to build up larger populations of these mammals, so if we do have bird flu come, and it does kill some of them, we still have resilient populations for the future. … I know it’s a distressing thing for Australians to hear but we need to be realistic. This is the sort of thing we have seen overseas. We’re very fortunate we’re the last continent to have the bird flu happen.