Healthy: 333 Great Whites caught on ten-mile stretch between Ballina, Lennox and Evans Head!

"The big pectoral fins look like a plane, the white belly almost gleams in the sun against the dark rocks. We eyeball each other."

Don’t let it be said that there ain’t a flourishing White population in Australian waters, the result of a decision by the conservative government in 1999 to erect a legal forcefield around ‘em.

Whatever you think of Great Whites, majestic, horrifying, divine or the embodiment of evil, they sure do like it in the warm, clean waters between Lennox Head and Ballina.

Over the past four years, the NSW government has employed contractors to tag and release sharks caught on drumlines between Lennox Head and Ballina and around Evans Head.

The drumlines are of the “smart” sort, which means whenever a shark, or whatever, bites, the contractors are hit with an email, text or call telling ‘em to come and free the fish.

And the head-count?

Three hundred and thirty-three Whites have been caught, tagged released, sixty-seven Tigers and only seven Bulls, once the staple bities around these part.

Three hundred plus, oowee, that’s a lot of Great Whites swimming around.

It doesn’t necessarily mean terror, however.

(A couple of exceptions, here, here and here.)

Last year, BeachGrit’s Longtom wrote of a divine encounter with a juvie White at his beloved Point,

Flick. Some little imperceptible rapid movement in my peripheral vision sparks an unconscious reaction. I turn quickly to the movement. It takes a micro-second to see clearly what it is. A White shark. Coming in very hot straight at me. I don’t feel a thing even remotely allied with fear. It’s a “whoa!” I face it.

It turns quickly and comes almost to a dead stop. I can feel the pressure wave on my legs. White shark does a slow circle around me. I can see it the whole time in the crystal clear water. Comes in nice and slow right underneath me and rolls over. The big pectoral fins look like a plane, the white belly almost gleams in the sun against the dark rocks. We eyeball each other.

There is no fear, no frozen feelings, no panic. Just a profound moment of inter-species communication across the gulf of millions of years of evolution.

Are you, like me, thrilled by the rude good health of Australia’s great white stocks?

Are you, like me, not planning on surfing the Ballina to Byron stretch anytime soon?