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NEWS
Time to remove shark nets?
Humane Society in a knot over shark netsWith a fifth whale found tangled in shark nets this season off the Queensland coast, Humane Society International (HSI) has called on the NSW and Queensland Governments to remove shark nets for good.
“Shark nets and drumlines set in the waters off the East Coast of Australia may have been put in place to protect ocean users, but the reality is they cause far more harm to our marine life, whilst providing very little additional benefit to protect us from the tragic but rare event of shark encounters,” said HSI’s Senior Program Manager Alexia Wellbelove.
HSI believes that shark control programs are an out-dated and ineffective method of protecting the population, and that instead State Governments would be better investing in alternate strategies as well as further increasing capacity to educate ocean users of the risks of shark encounters.
Ms Wellbelove continued, “These nets are indiscriminate killers of our marine life, including dugongs, turtles, the great white shark and other harmless sharks such as the critically endangered grey nurse shark. Targeted shark control programs provide no real protection for humans, but are indiscriminate killers of our marine life.”
New South Wales law has recognised shark netting as a “key threatening process” since 2003, following a scientific submission to Government by HSI.
But NSW DPI says the NSW Government’s shark meshing program has been effective in helping to provide a safer environment for swimmers and surfers since it was first introduced at most of Sydney’s ocean beaches in 1937.
The program involves using specially designed nets along 51 beaches from Newcastle to Wollongong, where the majority of people in NSW swim and surf. The nets do not stretch from one end of a beach to the other. They are not designed to create a total barrier between bathers and sharks – they are designed to deter sharks from establishing territories, thereby reducing the odds of a shark encounter.
While the nets cannot provide a guarantee that a shark attack will never happen, we believe they have been effective in greatly reducing the number of attacks.
Since the NSW shark meshing program was put in place in 1937, there has only been one fatal attack on a meshed beach. That fatality occurred at Merewether Beach, Newcastle, in 1951. Before the program was in place, during the period from 1900 to 1936, there was an average of one fatal shark attack every year in NSW waters.
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Written byBoatsales Staff
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