Two hundred dollars of government cash towards your
new Shark Shield.
You might’ve heard that sleepy
ol Western Australia has a Great White
problem. One attack, two attacks, fifteen deaths
since 2000. All presumed to be hits by Great Whites, a
species that’s been protected since, oh, 1999.
Quick
question: How many surfers were killed by sharks in
Western Australia prior to 2004?
Did you get it?
(The answer is zero.)
The latest was a
seventeen-year-old kid surfing with her dad. Leg
bitten off at the hip. Bled out on the beach in front of her family
while an off-duty nurse pounded her heart. Further evidence,
if any was necessary, that there abounds a healthy stock of Great
White sharks in the Indian Ocean.
Maybe there always was.
As reported by the fabulous,
bass-voiced Fred Pawle in The Australian
today,
The protection of great white
sharks was introduced in Australia when nobody in the world knew
the species’ global population, says one of the co-authors of the
federal government’s plan to replenish the species in
2002.
One could argue that this is
still the case. Despite decades of expensive research, precious
little is known about shark abundance and behaviour, which is why
every time there is an attack we have the same futile
debate.
It gets worse. It turns out
Australia was emphatically told the debate was ill-informed in
2004, when a Japanese fishing official strongly objected to our
successful application to increase worldwide protection of great
whites. The official argued that the application was based on
insufficient evidence and failed to consider the potential of
increasing attacks on people.
At a meeting of the 22 Australian
researchers contributing to the Great White Recovery Plan in 2002,
the CSIRO’s chief shark researcher at the time, John Stevens, who
has since retired, was asked whether he knew the size of the
species’ global population.
“He was not in a position to
answer it because the research had not been done,” says Geoff
McPherson, who represented the Queensland Department of Primary
Industries at the meeting.
And,
Such pessimism about the dangers
of sharks, and the pragmatism to deal with them, were not on
display at the Senate hearing in Perth yesterday. “We are both
fearful and fascinated by our monsters,” professor Jessica Meeuwig,
of the University of Western Australia, told the hearing.
She said the fear was based on
the prospect of becoming prey, and the fascination was an attempt
to avoid doing so. She attributed these survival instincts to our
“lower brains”.
She then said lethal methods for
managing sharks were “dumb … ineffective, counter-productive,
woefully arrogant and socially shortsighted”. She cited “good data”
from Queensland, NSW and Hawaii that “shows there has been no
reduction in the incidents of attacks” when lethal methods, such
as nets and drum lines, are used.
The data suggests this is not the
case. In Queensland, there has been one fatality at a protected
beach in 50 years; the same applies to NSW, where nets were first
installed in 1936.
When the Federal Government told the
new left-wing government of WA they should prioritise humans over
sharks they were hit with the old “killing sharks won’t save lives”
line.
Same story. Same results.
Anyway, it remains a helluva
problem. Great Whites are killing kids, tourism and
a lifestyle that defines a state where its inhabitants squat
on the edge of the Simpson desert.
It didn’t help that Filipe Toledo and
Kolohe Andino were dragged out of the water by jetskis at the
government-sponsored Margaret River Pro when the water suddenly
boiled in a feeding frenzy. Not that you would’ve known there was
the potential for Jeffreys Bay redux.
“Surface action” is the new euphemism
for “shark”. Cue Margaret River tourism ad.
But politics, especially of the
left-leaning variety, means any kind of tough decision is
going to be an impossible sell. If the government won’t allow
nets and won’t allow sharks to be fished, what can they do?
How about subsidising shark
repellants such as the Shark Shield? Six hundred bucks built into your Ocean Earth
tailpad.
Do they work? Depends who you talk
to.
Shark Shield says yes.
Anecdotal evidence
suggests a generous maybe.
But, what the hell, it’s the
appearance of the government doing something eco-friendly and
tech-forward that matters.
And do you wonder how they’ll police
the subsidy? Do you need to have a WA address?
Shark Shield managing director
Lyndsay Lyon, meanwhile, is doing brisk business even before the
subsidy comes into effect. He’s sold six hundred in the last four
months.
