"(We) will always put human life and human safety first with the shark control program."
The Queensland government was just “hours” away from announcing the removal of shark nets on its beaches, it’s been revealed, replacing ‘em with birds in the sky during the annual winter whale migration when three hundred or so of the leviathans swim up the coast for the tropical waters of North Queensland.
And where there’s whales, Whites are gonna trail.
Despite criticism the nets were a little blunt in their application, taking out whales (tend to get tangled up on the return journey in August), dolphins and turtles etc, until last September there hadn’t been a fatal attack on Queensland’s netted beaches since their introduction sixty years earlier.
Do they work? Yeah, they do.
And, yet, before the September fatality, the Queensland shark control program’s scientific working group had recommended a scaling back of the nets, using aerial surveillance and drumlines here and there. Maybe they’d figured it was an act of God, not man, that had kept sharks and surfers away from each other.
Then Nick Slater was killed at Greenmount and all bets were off, as they say.
The Queensland government don’t fuck around.
They know the electorate well.
Now, data from June reveals thirty-five sharks, including nineteen tigers and two Great Whites, were caught in the nets, including a ten-footer at Coolangatta, right in the middle of the fabled Superbank.
A few theories were kicking around after the Greenmount hit, the most common being the build up of sand had positioned surfers right on the deep-water drop off, in the path of whales and Great Whites.
“(We) will always put human life and human safety first with the shark control program,” Fisheries Minister Mark Furner told the Courier-Mail. “The Government has no plan to remove shark control nets or drumlines from state controlled waters.”
A very different mindset to Byron Bay, an hour or so south, where the Great White, along with the leashless log, both killers, are venerated.
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whatever floats your boat……very deep and meaningless !!
duh , ah plenty of sharks here , maybe it’s because most of us don’t get hysterical and it’s the vibe in the water hereman, they are our brothers and sisters……..and you’re right , no surf here …….
as I said right wing whingers , weak on facts and substance , but really good at attacking the messenger…….and just for the record , I purposely don’t have any assets , don’t own a car , you probably wouldn’t understand but there’s more to life that people like you who have a hard on for $’s!
“They’ve done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time.”
yeah what would the scientists know at CSIRO…..you right whingers are all the same…
Keep looking.
“Why do they call her ‘Moana’?”
“Oh.”
On a slight deviation from SharkGrit magazine…..I just saved a bunch of money switching to Geico car insurance.
Hey DR you missed a good shark story that came out yesterday – some Mexican researchers published a study positing that various shark species sharing the same waters and food sources hunt in shifts: the tigers at dawn, the bullsharks mid-day, the reef sharks in the arvo, the whites toward dusk, and the hammerheads nocturnally. Interesting info!
Sounds like gubmint segregation to me.
Oh yes it is. Can you send? [email protected]
I’m on it, brother
Well done gld
Goanna be a few waves on the shark coast this weekend (for the record that could be any coastline in Australia … except NT, where the crocs eat the sharks)
Overcast, grey and cold day by the coast today up here. Gotta say, the channel I paddled out through did feel a little iffy s’arv. Nets or no nets, the cunts are there.
DR, you at Bondi today? Monster bait ball with some toothy bastards following along according to the scare mongers on the news.
Yeah, I was, saw the chopper circling for half an hour, waited for the sirens, shrieked, paddled-flew in. Inspection of the drone footage reveals a few grey nurses, a couple of bronzies, one eight-footer of indeterminate species.
Shiiiiiitee.. what they showed on the news seemed scary but under clubbie control. Mostly as the bait fish seemed kinda obscured due to the bleakness of the day. I guess in hindsight – that, plus the recent attacks and scares were in my sub/present conscious yesty. Still, it was good!
Byron sharks lurk in the organic cafes
Looking for free range loggers
Ok I bite……it’s not just a couple of hundred Leviathans…….
I think that we are just starting to get the eco system back to where it was . Once upon atime there were an estimated 30,000 whales who migrate up the East Coast . in the 1950’s to 60’s these number were decimated by our whalers , to the point it got down to a couple of hundred whales in the late 60’s to 80’s…….we now see over 20,000 + whales now making the migration …increasing by 10 % per year.
https://ceal.lab.uq.edu.au/……
So as we are restoring the eco system , and whales numbers are rapidly increasing , so are the deaths of whales and the increase in sharks, as their food source is back …..
The bad news for surfers/ocean users, the East Coast of Australia will have more and more sharks , GWS’s/Bulls /Tigers in the future.
The idea that culling GWS’s will work, goes against the balance of nature , all you have to do is look at Reunion Island , where in the 60’s the local fishermen decimated the population of the reef sharks for their fins for shark fin soup in Hong Kong . The result was total imbalance in their eco system, and the population of Bull and Tiger sharks went through the roof , to where you can’t surf or swim anymore.
To me the Bull sharks are a helluva lot worse than GWS’s……….there is a simple answer for using the ocean on the East Coast , and that’s to use drones …..if you are surfing a spot known to have sharks .
when you go surfing ,and are with a couple of mates …..take it in turns of operating your drone , so you can spot any sharks in the area!
the ol’ ro sham bo to see who gets to surf at optimum tide?
Farken hell
Don’t give up your day job
He should quit his day job, night job and everything else based on that rambling bullshit.
Nutjob.
being a surfer and worried about sharks or vaccines …now there’s a nutjob!
So what are your fact and fears, LOL!
You don’t make any sense, ever. Even a seven word response was incoherent. Stop talking.
so you can’t understand me , have you ever had an IQ test?
Are you actually able to coherently tell me what doesn’t make sense to you , other than just saying doesn’t make sense..
I’ll dumb it down for you….
what facts do you have that contradict mine?
Are you sacred to surf with sharks?
C’mon Brutus. Don’t drag this out. You sound like a retard when you talk. It has nothing to do with my comprehension level or knowledge of sharks.
so what sounds retarded to you…as you and ol Bexy seem the same , if you don’t like the way I present my facts , well you can fucken not comment…..if you can’t back up ya big mouth with actually something concrete , well get together with ol Bexy and continue your moronic bromance !
So I’ll ask again , what facts don’t you like or are you just shooting the messenger ?
It’s the messenger for sure
well ain’t that just so easy for you….please do not read my posts or comment…..as you add only personal attacks to the conversation , and like lil’ Bex, have no links /substance or anything to add except in trying to shoot the messenger who presents facts!
what facts don’t you like ol bexy …..do you have anything to add , or still no substance !
Not sure how Bulls are a hell of a lot worse than Whites? Pretty sure GW’s account for about 100% of all shark attacks on the east coast of Aus at least? If you think it’s alright to just back and surfing (or other ocean use) being just a game of Russian Roulette. And comparing Bulls to Whits is like comparing a shit and turd sandwich. But yeah let’s everyone go out and buy drones! they’ve proven to be completely fucking useless as seen in every viral drone video of GW’s sniffing around surfers of late. The rubbish people spout about “ keeping vigilant” in the water etc etc is nauseating, these things are dinosaurs with brains the size of golf balls they’re instinct is to eat, shit and breed in a sensory fashion, zero cognitive or critical thought. I like the part about surfing places that are known to have sharks, dude that’s every patch of sand or reef in Australia there are 10’s of thousands of GW’s in Australian waters according to the DPI.
spent a lot of my life talking with fishermen and divers , and watching Shark doco’s…..you know like educating myself…….
There is a very big behaviour difference between GWS’s and Bulls and Tigers , and there are recorded attacks on the East Coast by all the fore mentioned species!
Pretty sure are you that GW’s account for 100% of all shark attacks on the East Coast ????
Not sure where you get your info from, but there have been attacks by Bulls/ Tigers and GWS’s…there are not 10’s of thousands of GWS’s in Australian water, you made that up or were told by an anti-vaxxer!
and no not every patch of reef or sand has sharks…..so you have a choice , take the risk or not!
we all know surfers aren’t really that bright….https://http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10...
Yeah nice graduation straight to Anti Vaxxer I love that. No I’m talking about the spate of attacks on surfers on the east coast of Australia since 2014 have by and large been at the hands of GW’s. I’m talking about the DPI’s estimate of GW population on the east coast of between 2k – 12K which in other words is we have no fucking idea but it’s heaps. Also they stopped tagging a while ago possibly because it might let the government and citizens realise the ocean is teaming with them and might give authorities reason to remove them from the endangered list. I’ve also heard many accounts from fisherman including people saying there a shit load more than they thought back in 1999. Furthermore the science is pretty clear that dead or distressed sharks deter others from entering an area as documented very clearly by a Nat Geo documentary that’s mysteriously disappeared. Of course we don’t want people to think there’s a shitload of white sharks these days and the best way to keep them of our beaches is to hang them off baited hooks (drum lines). The science is pretty clear and the DPI know how to keep recreational ocean users and GW’s apart and unfortunately it means a few have to die on the hook and hang there for a while. I’d much rather that then have them spend 2M+ of tax payers money on counselling loved ones and victims after the fact. Prevention is always better than cure as we know.
try CSIRO….As part of phase one of the project we looked for half-siblings among 75 Eastern Australasian juvenile sharks and found 20. To give this some context, 75 samples permits 2,775 unique comparisons between animals. So less than 1% of those comparisons were siblings. We estimated that the number of adult sharks to be around 470 (with a range of 280-650), with at least 90% surviving from one year to the next. Given limited data there was no precise information on adult population trend.
The close-kin approach can only tell us about the adult population, however. To extend these estimates to total population size, we need to know something about the survival rate of juvenile sharks. Using data from around 70 juvenile sharks fitted with acoustic emitters, archived under Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System, we estimated that juvenile sharks had an annual survival rate of around 73%.
Combining these juvenile survival estimates with the adult abundance and survival information from the close-kin analyses we estimated there to be around 4,060 (and a range of 2,500-6,750) white sharks in the whole Eastern population.
After obtaining these results from the initial data, we moved onto phase two of the project. We collected and processed more samples to obtain both more data for the Eastern population, and enough samples and half-sibling matches to estimate the adult population size in the Southern-Western region. In the East we now have 214 juvenile samples, and found 73 half-siblings; in the Southern-Western case we now have 175 samples, and found 27 half-siblings.
The revised estimates of adult population size in the East were around 750 (with a range of 470-1,030) and annual survival probabilities of 93%…..
https://www.surfline.com/su…
as I said before , it looks like the eco system is coming back , so working out how surfers/ocean users can use the ocean with the increases in sharks…..rather than cull cull cull from a group of people who scared and not prepared to take risks!
There you go assuming again, you think I haven’t read that shit too? Did anyone say cull? Nobody wants GW’s to be extinct they play a part in the ecosystem no doubt but the science is pretty clear on what deters them. They’re a basic predator that’s only going to respond on instinct. Dancing around all this other bullshit is a waste of time, we know drum lines are the most effective so they should use them. Otherwise more people are going lose limbs or their lives and the communities around them have to deal with the trauma and the government has to foot the bill. On top of that regional communities economy’s suffer and livelihoods are effected all for what? To feel warm and fuzzy about GW’s?
Can you provide your link on the science behind sharks being scared by dead sharks?
Drumlines seem to work and nets ….to a certain degree…….what about all the beaches on the East Coast that don’t have any protection how do you protect them?
I must admit I have seen some huge whites while surfing , and I am in awe at how big and beautiful they are……but as I posted above there have been a lot of fatalities in NSW/QLd , by bull/tiger sharks……and that’s a fact!
So what’s your answer to the Bulls and Tigers…..and how do you patrol the whole East Coast of australia?
Yeah there must be a bit of Trauma when communities lose someone to a shark…..not sure if you have the same in your community…..but we have had 3 suicides by 20 years olds this year…..all within a couple of hundred meters of Bells…to the point now , it doesn’t even make the news here as its too heavy for the community?
There quite few examples of people testing the theory with great success as seen in the example above, I. Previously mention there was Nat Geo doc about it a decade ago but it’s near impossible to find these days obviously because it doesn’t suit the protect at all costs agenda. They’re called semiochemicals they exist everywhere in nature. Tagged sharks flee an area instantly dive over the continental shelf and stay away for a time, which had been observed by the DPI even in the smart drum trials you must have read that? It’s evident too since there’s been one fatal attack on the gold coast since 1958 and there’s been many on the east coast as well as down south as you know. But nice straw man tactic bringing up male suicide in this argument as if they cancel each other out, suicide is a different issue entirely it shows your character bringing up such a complex and pressing issue to support your argument. There’s been multiple in my area too and they by no means have anything to do with what we’re talking about and everything to do with a broader issue with men’s mental health and social condition. Many factors attribute including the current COVID pandemic, is COVID to blame? The answer is no, it’s a contributing factor to the trauma of a person but not the root cause. Men’s suicide will still be an issue in the future, pandemic or not.
you obviously didn’t read the link I posted , which showed bull sharks have killed people on the Gold Coast in the canals , Bull shark killed a lady at Frazer Island , Tiger shark killed off Cairns the list goes on……what you have provided is not scientific evidence but experimental trials , where are the conclusive scientific links?
I used the youth suicide example of what’s real at the moment , and sharks are just , well increasing and there’s nothing you can do about it without fucking the Eco system…just hysterical, emotional reactions…..not based on science , from a group of people who think they have the right to alter the environment, because they can’t play in the ocean and feel secure…..FFS you brought up that I care more about sharks than people….I spend considerable time and effort helping people with mental issues , and it’s mindblowing the numbers at the moment…..not just men but women too…
So sharks are like worrying about car accidents , they just happen but everyone who has been attacked , had a choice of going into the ocean knowing there are dangers…
Ask and you shall receive Brutus, scroll down to page 22 if you don’t want to go through all the biological jargon and 70 odd year history of research into shark repellents. Or is the UWA not scholarly enough by your standards?
https://api.research-reposi…
You can search through all the historical data to find stats that back up your narrative that there’s other shark species that are of risk to people, Bull sharks are pests and super aggressive but from my experience up here the bulk of attacks from Byron down to the Mid North Coast and further have been Great Whites, sorry if that hurts to hear mate but it’s a fact.
And so you know I have lost 2 mates in the past 6 months to suicide, I have plenty of family connection to mental health and understand a great deal about it, but again it’s a separate issue and weird your drawing comparisons. That’s strawman dude, righties use those tactics, but then again the closest thing to hard right beliefs is hard left. It’s horseshoe effect.
read the link you posted..thank you , learnt some more stuff about sharks…….
I have been talking about the whole East Coast of Australia , not just Byron to the mid North Coast……..as the whole East Coast is one environment and to just cherry pick your part of the coast .
The reason I bring up the sad but true subject of mental health, is that there seems to be an epidemic in our society that is growing daily…..not a lot being said and a lot of the examples of mental health is suicides , and now there seems to be a cover up , as most are now not reported to the public…….but when it comes to sharks , people seem very passionate about finding a way to alleviate their fears….so I think your strawman analogy does not really apply here..
I think that’s enough…..as usual when I dig in and have conversations with people like you , I learn so much …..so thank you….see you on the next story/Issue?
“People like you” is a an interesting way to put it, as I said from the outset the science is there and had been for a long time but sadly for you it doesn’t suit your sensibilities it’s seems I draw different conclusions to the same information, a different view you could say. Sorry If I sound a little NSW centric but if you hadn’t noticed from 2014 onward there was a noticeable increase and attacks at the hands of GW’s in northern NSW and has been shitload further south since. The smart drum program mitigated the problem in Byron when you look at the data. Since you live down south you don’t hear how many near misses happen up here. Apart from the obvious there’s also economic factors that come in like coastal tourism and industry sales, there’s livelihoods at stake as well. I agree that humans treat the planet and environment with contempt in many ways but we’re here and we fuck the environment so much more with pollution and over fishing certain areas it makes no sense not to manage human interaction with the apex predator over here while raping their food source over there. And let’s not forget the earth has been around 4.6 billion years and hundreds of millions of species have gone extinct well before we were here. The earth will be here much longer than we will be, it just keeps on evolving and ecosystems grow and die and grow again. Environments change, like all animals humans have altered or adapted to the environment for survival since the beginning it’s how we have got to where we are. Letting a few more fish die on a hook to deter the others from frequenting an area is not going to bring on the collapse of the whole oceans ecosystem, if you’re so worried maybe go out and protest the tuna industry or any other commercial fishing component that pulls millions of tonnes of fish out regularly. Getting uppity about the plight of the GW is bordering on virtue signalling.
Hey I agree on the subject of suicide there needs to be a lot more funding into mental health awareness and education in schools, but roughly 80% of people that suicide have never been in front of a mental health professional because they don’t want people to stop them from carrying it out, as I said it’s complex and irrelevant in this discussion.
Maybe you should find out who the GW’s publicist is? They run ad campaigns for weeks after each shark attack up here on how sharks are “ misunderstood”. Mental health could use that kind of PR budget no doubt. But hitting issues like that might be too real for the populous? Who knows.
Ok pretty interesting some of the stuff you mentioned above…..just so you know , it’s when people can discuss issues and be at different ends of the spectrum….not get personal ( hard to do on BG)….and hopefully an understanding of both sides of the issue takes place….maybe somewhere in the middle lies the answer…..??
” And let’s not forget the earth has been around 4.6 billion years and hundreds of millions of species have gone extinct well before we were here. The earth will be here much longer than we will be, it just keeps on evolving and ecosystems grow and die and grow again. Environments change, like all animals humans have altered or adapted to the environment for survival since the beginning it’s how we have got to where we are. Letting a few more fish die on a hook to deter the others from frequenting an area is not going to bring on the collapse of the whole oceans ecosystem”
I agree that the Global eco system has seen radical change over it’s history. But for the first time in History , man is messing up his habitat to the point we can all see life for our kids/future generations being vastly different from ours with a degraded habitat.
The main reason for the spiralling down of our habitat , is mans greed and thinking that Earths resources are infinite. We have plundered our planets resources and also made huge mistakes with the environment. Cane Toads/Rabbits/foxes/cats /whales etc….that’s why I used the whale Stats initially , from nearly extinct to now thriving again…….but on the East Coast as the whale stocks replenish , so do the sharks.
I agree that baiting hooks etc could be a part solution for some beaches , but the logistics on doing that down the whole East Coast seems very improbable…..so there could be more sharks at other unprotected beaches , when you stop them with Sharks on hooks /nets/drumlines……what about all the others who surf on beack beaches etc?
I agree with your tuna anology , as the Japanese have stored Billions of $’s of Tuna in Freezers as an investment , because if they can make them extinct , their investment goes thru the roof…..tuna was once called the Chicken of the sea…been fished out , all for $’s……I dot like this philosophy of , lets create extinction to make more $’s…….
That’s why I proposed a drone solution…..as we know battery life is increasing every year…I think technology can solve the problem of co-existing with our ocean animals……
Funny they estimate about 470 adult GW’s when there’s currently 593 tagged by the DPI? Bit weird there possibly floored data when all you have to go off is DNA mapping.
are the 593 all adults over 12′?
I am not a scientist , but I listen to them and not stories from people who don’t have a clue…like fishermen…
So hours after the attack in Tuncurry they caught roughly 1% of the total GW population after putting drums out? Or perhaps in the 6 months they used smart drums at Tuncurry they pulled up 65? Over 10% of the total population at just one beach? Really? You really think there’s less than 500?
I read what scientists say , and CSIRO are pretty credible , but you know better because..??
Are u fckn kidding – so if ya mate with a drone spots a GWS on the charge at your other mate….or you…..what then?
GWS’s will always circle their prey , and with the clear water on the East Coast , easy to see them….before they attack…….but then again surfers aren’t the brightest….
https://www.abc.net.au/news…
You reckon it’s easy to see a GW circling you? You must have laser eyes mate they spent hundreds of millions of years learning how not to be seen and over that time evolution has sculpted them to be near impossible to see even at short distance. Prime example is the thousands on the beach with boats and Skis everywhere and yet nobody at Jbay spotted that thing come up for nibble on Micks leggy?
I have surfed with GWS for more than 50 years…..no dramas……how about your statement about 100% GWS attacks on East Coast , why the fuck do you people make shit up because you are scared of sharks and fear them?
Ok genius tell me how many attack on the east coast weren’t Great Whites? I can think of maybe one or two in North Queensland. You think people make shit up because it doesn’t suit your “protect animals at all costs” agenda? I’ll reframe it for you, the VAST MAJORITY of attacks on the east coast of NSW were most definitely GW’s, if you don’t think so you’ve had your head in the sand. I’ve surfed for 30 years and never gave them a second thought but here we are after 20 odd years of protecting one species while 90 billion tonnes of other sea life are extracted from the oceans each year, where’s the balance in that? And why do you holier than thou eco warriors value animals lives over people? GW’s would not go extinct if popular surfing towns had drum lines off the beaches. They’d simply avoid those areas due to smelling the semiochemicals being omitted by the dead ones on the hooks. Voila coexistence. I’ll take a few dead sharks over dead or injured people any day wouldn’t you?
I am not a genius just self educated . When I see an issue/question I can’t answer , I search multiple sources to find all sides of the issue….so facts are the basis of my opinion…..
so I have just read a couple of articles about shark attacks in NSW and Qld…pretty interesting to see how many fatal bull and Tiger shark attacks there have been in the last 200 years….NSW leads the way with 69 fatal attacks while Qld has has 68…so your claims are just that..try and read the facts….
http://www.amazingaustralia…
your whole argument revolves around GWS’s being the VAST MAJORITY of attacks……well what about all the bulls and tigers?
I don’t value animal lives over humans, but as man is still destroying habitat and the worlds eco systems , this whole,” But I surf and am scared of sharks , so lets make the ocean a safer place , by killing anything that threatens mans right to be the top predator, just to feel safer LOL !”
I’m a scientist…..you? The ABC as a source lol, nice one ☝️
haha…..did you read the article its just a story about surfers being told there is a pack of Bull sharks near , and they stayed in the water….safety in numbers……..and no I am not a scientist , but I read what they say ….and listening to some of the commentators here , emotional hysterical fear……
So not not only do I have to buy a drone I need to make friends too? Feck eff with that
nah , either take your risks with sharks in the ocean , or try skateboarding!
Fucking sharks
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Rule 34
Just watched Moana with wifey. Duude the rule 34 images for that movie are fucking hilarious.
It’s actually rule 35, no? If there is no porn of it, porn will be made of it.
Nope. Rule 34. I just checked.
Is that the shark equivalent of humans hitting the headboard?