Government shoots to kill…
If you’re easily scared and you live on the western flank of Australia, you might want to avoid reading the twitter feed on tagged sharks there.
Tigers, bronze whalers, great whites, whatever, they’re kicking around in such numbers you’d be inclined to think one could walk on their backs from Cottesloe in the south to Hillarys further north. (But wear shoes. Backs so rough!)
Some sharks a few clicks offshore; others a hundred or less. And they’re just the tagged sharks.
This morning, the Fisheries Department SharkSmart live feed reminded us that one three-metre white shark had been detected 66 times off a Perth metro beach.
It didn’t take much for the government to react, either. As you read, contractors are on the scene with baited hooks, drum lines and, one would assume, a gun with an order to capture and kill the errant fish which was first detected yesterday.
Nor did it take long for the Greens Party to express its dislike of the Barnett Government’s newish shoot-to-kill policy.
“It is entirely inappropriate for them to be using the tagged monitoring system to then target a shark and kill it,” Greens spokeswoman Rachel Siewert said. “The Government is responding in an inappropriate manner and they need to rescind this order.”
Just a couple clicks away, live updates can be seen on Surf Lifesaving’s Twitter feed. (Click here!)
Again, if you’re the jumpy type, best you avoid that, for it’s all bad news this morning, sharks here, sharks there and, ominously, the most recent post: “Westpac Lifesaver Helicopter is currently helping the Water Police in a missing persons search at Scarborough Beach.”
You will recall the governement’s snappy response following the attack on Sean Pollard at Esperance earlier this year. It didn’t waste a second and pulled two whites out of the water just hours after the south-west surfer was attacked.
Some say murder, others rest easy.