Ben Kneppers
Time and time again we have heard the various rumours and controversies concerning the use of shark nets at Manly beach and the surrounding waters. With gossip circulating in the public domain is ranging from the use of super high-tech shark tracking systems monitoring shark movements across all NSW shores to the more sombre existence of unbreachable nets running the entire length of the northern beaches and to the more extreme notion that the authorities are simply stating that the nets exist to dupe public confidence when in fact there is very little if any at all. Personally wishing to further understand this confusion, I decided to delve a little deeper and do a little research of my own.
What I discovered was official report documents showing that shark nets do in fact exist but are not a permanent feature on our beaches. Apparently, the nets move between fifty-one beaches, from Newcastle to Wollongong, between September and April, where their locations remain undisclosed to the public due to concerns that the netted beaches will overfill with safety-hungry swimmers (seriously, I am not making this up!). Also the nets themselves do not even stretch from the beach end to end or water to surface. Instead, they just cover a certain section around the surface that intends to not seal off the sharks but break up their habitat production and encourage them to move on (1).
With all that being said, there is unfortunately a bit more to the story than this mysterious moving section of shark netting. The NSW Fisheries Scientific Committee has actually listed the use of beach nets as a key threatening process under the Fisheries Management Act (2). Why would this be? I thought they were there to just shoo the sharks off a bit??? Well, it looks like the shark nets are not only deterrents of these slightly scary mammals, but also killers of other marine life including turtles, dolphins and rays. For example, between 2004-06, two baby humpback whales were killed from being trapped in the nets. Even the sharks themselves have come down to two main threatening species, tiger and bull sharks, and the ‘scariest’ of all, the great white, is now an endangered species, which means they must be released upon capture (3).
So how does this all add up? Does the trade-off of increasing the safety of swimmers for the loss of a few marine animals add up? The stats do show that there has only been one shark related fatality on a netted Sydney beach in 71 years, occurring in 1963, but an objection still comes up here in the fact that there has been a dramatic drop in the population of sharks in Sydney due to overfishing (4). Hmm… what is the right solution? Some say that installing a sonar-based deterred system could do the job, and others say we just need to use more shark spotter aircrafts. I will leave you to be the judge. This subject is open for your comments within the blog page.
References:
2009, Shark Nets Revealed, Manly Daily, last viewed 20 January 2012, LINK "http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/shark-nets-revealed/" http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/shark-nets-revealed/.
Dixon, P, Final Recommendation: Current Shark Meshing Program in New South Wales Waters, Fisheries Scientific Committee, last viewed 20 January 2012, LINK "http://www.taasfa.com/FR24-shark-meshing1.pdf" http://www.taasfa.com/FR24-shark-meshing1.pdf.
2011, Sharks under attack, The Age, last viewed 20 January 2012, http://education.theage.com.au/cmspage.php?intid=142&intversion=109.
2006, RE: Shark nets not a life saver, Environmental Defender’s Office Ltd, last viewed 20 January 2012, LINK "http://www.edo.org.au/edonsw/site/pdf/misc/sharknet_letter_manlydaily060119.pdf" LINK http://www.edo.org.au/edonsw/site/pdf/misc/sharknet_letter_manlydaily060119.pdf.
