Two hundred and four Great Whites snatched by drumlines!
It’s been a quiet year on Australia’s blissfully hip North Coast, shark wise.
What had become the modern incarnation of the shark-ridden town Amity in Jaws, a swimmer snatched in waist-deep water, a surfer bitten in half, the town terrorised by Great Whites, had suddenly quieted.
Only one year ago, Dan Webber, the Ballina-based brother of shaper Greg, came up with the startling statistic that, if you surfed for one hour every day around Ballina and Byron, you had a ten percent chance of become shark meal.
Did you wonder what had happened to all the Great Whites?
To find out, a pal of a pal tabulated a year’s worth of SMART (Shark-Management-Alert-in-Real-Time) drumlines statistics from the NSW Department of Fisheries.
(A little background: SMART drumlines have an anchor, a rope, a comms device linked to a satellite and a baited hook. Shark jumps on the hook. Out come the DPI. Nearly all sharks are caught alive and released one kilometre offshore. There’s fifty-five SMART drumlines deployed from Lennox to Forster.)
And oooeeee, they are startling statistics.
In 2016, in the entirety of Queensland, with its network of shark nets and baited hooks, six Great Whites were caught.
From December 2016 to Nov 2017, in the area from Lennox to Forster, a five hour’s drive, 204 Great Whites were caught compared to a dozen Tigers and four Bulls.
Two hundred and four.
The overwhelming majority of these Great Whites were released alive.
Now, Great White ain’t dumb killing machines despite whatever propaganda you want to employ.
As the gorgeous friend of the Great White, Brinkley Davies, revealed here a few years back, give ’em a fright and you won’t see a White for months.
Years.
The question: Does traumatising a Great White on a hook create a beast fearful of human contact?
And if so, should we be out there beating a few more up?
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Free idea!
A fitbit type device that pings when you are in the water and one of these sharks is nearby, because I’ll tell ya all of the apps in the world are no good to you when you are in the water.
Take it to the market and make hundreds before the “mate” I pitched it to, who then went on to steal it from me does.
Could there be a conspiracy of surfers who hate crowds breading and releasing whites into popular surf spots?
There could be.
I know from Tuna fishing offshore eastcoast US, the only way to get rid of blue sharks is to kill one, whether that means anything I don’t know.
They have the id of GWs tagged on drumlines, and also then alerted when these tagged Whites come back within 500mts of the shark buoys.
So…whats the stats on quickest one they have tagged that has come back into the beach again after dragging it out 1km??
Getting caught on a dirty big hook cant be affecting them because the shark buoys go off every 2nd day.
Also stat 2 needed= Have any previously caught/ tagged Whites been hooked again on drumline? That I’ll tell us how smart they are.
Taxpayer paying for this, why isnt stats and research available straight up, or do we need wait till Dept Fisheries/CSIRO massages it into the shape they want!
There have been at least 2 documented cases of sharks having been caught on the smart drumlines more than once.
So the deterrent effect, if it exists at all, is certainly not axiomatic.
Is it safe for me to come up and surf Lennox this week ?
Are you in the hood? Come around, little white farmhouse on the right past the water tank. Case will know it.
A cynic may suggest the research will be eventually released in the form of a PhD by one of the DPI people.
Oh we’ll be Cynical Norm… i thought that was a prerequisite for sign up to Grit.
Here’s a little sidebite: so now there are well over 200 white sharks swimming up and down the Aust east coast with tracking devices. The devices set off real time alarms on a broad array of detector buoys, I think right now there are 85 of ’em strung from Byron to Eden on the far NSW south coast. You can watch ’em on your phone, going off day and night, it’s fascinating. Anyway – the detector buoys cover pretty much all the coast – except for Sydney. They stop at Newcastle, and re-commence at Wollongong. Why do you reckon the most heavily populated piece of coast in Australia is exempted from white shark detection devices?
Sydney-siders are sensitive darlings?
Could it be that there are a heap of whites regularly prowling the greater Sydney coastline and that exposing this would hurt tourism numbers and coastal real estate values?
The sharks are better organised, concerned about privacy issues, and have greater political motivation than in other areas?
Because the GWS’s don’t like rich white meat , so its a means test kinda thing?
Just so damn dry that stuff
yeah no fat , or oils , make you reconsider being a cannibal!
Because Sydney have the nets and think they are safe??
Maroubra?
I’ve harboured the theory heavily populated areas – like Sydney – would ‘seem’ to a large deep-water White Shark to be akin to a no-go zone. The basis being all the electromagnetic noise / static / commotion playing havoc with electroreceptor organs / lateral lines. Obviously they’re about, but NOT in the numbers generally found in unpopulated coastlines. Well, that’s my theory… would love to know what an expert would make of it?
certainly no excuse for the lack of detector buoys off Sydney.
well maybe Kris, or maybe they’ve learned not to come in close because of the meshing.
Anyway a mate of mine recently took a pic of a solid 4m white cruising on the surface just off Barrenjoey Head at the northern end of the Sydney beaches, so yeah, they’re about.
… just another day off Sugarloaf or Arakoon or … (que: drum-roll) Cellito – which incidentally – Council are planning to re-open due to the red-weed build-up within Smiths Lake. fun n games!
A HUGE white shark surfaced while charging me at 25 mph a few months ago at the height of the Coho run. Its back looked as wide as a sheet of plywood – twice as big around as Mick’s shark, easy. I find it hard to relate how giant and virile this thing was. You’d think you’d freak out, but it was so overwhelmingly massive, fast and powerful that I just sat there waiting, fully adrenalized but feeling philosophical. It must have realized I wasn’t a seal and changed its mind.
Never saw it again, and actually decided to stay in the water because if it wanted me it would have already eaten me (that and it was about as good as it gets). Got a top two barrel of the year a couple of waves after, then decided that was the sign to hit the beach.
I want them ALL killed, but that can’t be the right thing. If torturing them a little makes them go away then so be it, set the hooks.
Wasn’t there also the thing where if you stake a dead one to the sea floor none come around for a long time? I think I remember reading that somewhere.
It’s a rumour. Sharks eat sharks.
They also also drive Audis, overuse cologne and and tell you how much money you could make by selling your house !
they’re the mud sharks and they eat their young and prey on anything that’s smaller!
Not according to Ms Brinkley Davies, shark-diving South Australian marine-bio gal.
I asked: “How’d did the Orcas smoke the White?”
She said: “First they take it down with their mouth or slam it with their body weight. After they kill, Orcas are picky eaters, so they’ll eat the liver and a few other things and leave the carcass. Right now it’s sitting on the sea floor. That’s why the sharks haven’t come back.”
I could tell you a dozen stories of shark fishermen with carcasses hooked next to their boats, then sitting watching big whites smashing the crap out of ’em, that might suggest otherwise.
It’s probably got more to do with the actual threat level.
I doubt that works with sharks, but on my old man’s fishing boat we used to execute a gull every now and then and launch it in the water. That fairly made the shitehawks pipe down for a few mins.
With all the GW tagging, why the hell dont they try this. Just sink a dead one near the Alert buoy and see how many alerts go off around it over a few months. Too easy to put that to bed if not true, but why not try?
I just beat off. I cannot coexist with anyone.
So, you’re saying there are 55 shark lip piercing franchises between Byron and Forster, and that GWSs are the dominant hipsters making the fashion statement?
We should all invest in a giant remote control Orca.
All orcas are giant and remote to me.
I feel this comment didn’t get the acknowledgement it deserves.
Very interesting; beat up those damn sharks, scare em away. Normally, I’m not much of a colonizer but in this instance, my Viking/Scottish/Spanish/French/Portuguese ancestry is screaming “chase those fuckers out!” (without any deep thought, my indigenous blood recused themselves on this particular vote)
Forster being only 1.5 hours from Newcastle, was Newcastle excluded because little to no action or does Newcastle not have the same drum lines etc? Everyone bangs on about stocko being a breeding ground, but little to no of anything except for that time one chomped a dolphin in half a couple years back.
Yeah I keep wondering. My near-Dixon dawn patrols are pretty quiet in the fin action, apart from dolphins, thankfully.
This is some fun carcharodon training at Stockton. jump to about 1:40:
https://youtu.be/4bc-Cv9C-E8
It’s a hop and a skip away, yet nothing seems to happen. Don’t know wether its the nets or what, ive had many surf up stocko, solo, the whole time just sitting there thinking about sharks. But the lack of crowds is just glorious
RIP Sygna.
NE swells at the mental hospital at stocko are some of my best memories. Glorious lefts. And yes, definitely a breeding ground for whites there.
Also up Gibba at Hawks Nest.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Never been in water there. Maybe one day. To be fair, it’s a not a small stretch of sand. Up near the deep of the lake mouth at Nelson, there are meant to be GWs the size of DT’s ego. Funny how there’s a place called ‘shark island’ just there.
I had a tech problem and only saw this after I commented . Amazing stuff . About 5 years ago a guy who spent some time with us in France told me about the young Great Whites coming up from the nursery at Stockton to the Forster region to grow up .
Well you are near me – I have never liked to admit where am living since moved out Sydney!!
Keep telling your Sydney pals that it’s a desperate nasty bogan wasteland out here. Keep our property prices down. I’m trying to buy a house but we’re priced out of the market due to other ‘Sharks.’
I saw, about 4 years ago on the ABC, a group of sports fisherman playing with Great Whites ( catch release ) at Stockton beach . The funniest thing was they weren’t in boats but fishing out of the back of Utes( pick up trucks ) from the shoreline .Thanks for the vid channel bottom .
But there is smart buoys hawks nest, maybe off Bar/Dixon and Redhead