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<div class="story-intro">Great white sharks have been protected in all Australian waters since 1998. The first male great whites born into that protection reached maturity eight to 10 years ago, and their female counterparts started maturing in 2010. In the meantime, the surviving juveniles born before 1998 presumably also mated.
The consequences of this protection arguably are being felt in human casualties, which are increasing dramatically.There have been 15 fatalities in Australia since August 2010 (and 51 injuries since 2012), which is more than triple the average for the past 50 years, according to the Australian Shark Attack File kept by the Taronga Conservation Society.
Unofficially, there may be more. When people go missing at sea — as 25-year-old Martyn Tann did off Mullaloo Beach, Perth, in 2013 — their fate is not always recorded as shark-related, even if the missing person is known to be a good swimmer.Of the known fatal attacks, at least five were, or were suspected to be, perpetrated by great whites.
You don’t need to be a statistician to suspect a correlation. Some are asking if it is time to lift the great white’s protected status. Have great whites — and, for that matter, tigers and bulls, which make up some of the other fatal attackers — reached numbers that may require more diligent management?
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<div class="caption">Australian surfer Mick Fanning was pursued by a shark, in Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa during the JBay Open, before punching the shark and escaping without injuries. See the full story and video here. Picture: World Surf League/ AP
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<div class="caption">Julian Wilson, who was surfing in the final with Fanning, had grave fears for the three-time world champion. “I saw him get knocked off his board and then a wave popped up and I thought, ‘He’s gone’”. Read Will Swanton’s analysis about why we love to watch sport as an escape from reality here. Picture: Kirstin Scholtz / World Surf League
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Wading into dangerous waters, Inquirer put this to two leading researchers this week.The first, Barry Bruce of the CSIRO, didn’t reply to my emails. The other, Ryan Kempster, a shark biologist and founder of Support Our Sharks, an advocacy group he operates from the University of Western Australia, initially engaged.In response to my impertinent question about whether he used the ocean himself, he said: “I have absolutely no problem entering the ocean for swimming, diving and surfing, and I do so regularly.” He added a link to SOS’s helpful safety advice page.On a more serious note, he said there was “no documented evidence that these species (tigers, bulls and whites) are increasing in abundance”.Anecdotally, surfers and fishermen across the country have been reporting that the size and abundance of large sharks are noticeably higher than they’ve been, in some places, for 30 years.Newcastle Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service chairman Cliff Marsh said in January there had been an “explosion” in the population of great whites in his area.
So why don’t researchers have documented evidence of this?I ask Kempster, but he declines to reply. A scan of the SOS website suggests why. The group is predominantly concerned with protecting the shark’s environment from people.“Almost all shark experts feel that the danger presented by sharks has been exaggerated,” the website says.“Even the creator of the Jaws phenomenon, the late Peter Benchley, attempted to dispel the perception of sharks as being man-eating monsters in the years before his death.”(Read: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws recalled by Valerie Taylor as film turns 40.)The CSIRO’s website is even more sympathetic. When Newcastle beaches were closed for 10 days in January, the CSIRO’s website described the media’s response as a “frenzy”.“While no attacks on humans have yet been recorded, the sharks have become national celebrities,” the nation’s top science organisation said. “So what’s the deal here? Are we seeing the real-life return of Jaws? Has a curse been struck down upon the town of Newcastle by Poseidon himself? Is a Sharknado next?“While this is a natural spectacle that should be enjoyed, it is advisable to do so from a distance — and on land. In time it will run its course, and we can all return to the water.”Three weeks later, 600km up the coast at Ballina, Japanese surfer and father Tadashi Nakahara was fatally attacked by a great white.Has admiration of large sharks gone too far? Yes, they play a role in maintaining ecological “balance” in the ocean. But these days we see them commonly described as beautiful, mysterious and majestic.
Interviewed on the
Today show during the Newcastle beach closures in January, the CSIRO’s Bruce said people should treat great whites with respect.Great whites, among others, have “proportionally larger brains than many of the so-called higher mammals”, Australian natural historian David Owen says in his comprehensive and affectionate book
Shark: In Peril in the Sea (2009). “The more research is conducted on them (sharks), the more questions remain to be answered.”One is tempted to ask: if research is not reducing the number of unanswered questions about sharks, what the hell is it doing?Surfers, too, have become big supporters of sharks. When father of two Chris Boyd was taken by a pair of great whites at Cowaramup, Western Australia, in 2013, South African big-wave surfer Grant “Twiggy” Baker dived into a debate on a surf website: “There’s 5 billion humans and only 5000 great white sharks on earth,” he said. “So what species is more important to protect?
A few less humans won’t affect the balance of nature on the planet but a few less sharks will, a great deal. I surf in some of the sharkiest places on the planet in South Africa and personally couldn’t think of a better way to go then (sic) at the ‘hand’ of nature’s most magnificent creature.”When Inquirer contacted Baker this week to confirm these comments, we engaged in an amusing email debate about the relative value of people and animals. “We honestly believe that we are more important than other living things on this planet,” he wrote. “Until we wake up and realise this is not the case we are doomed.”Baker is one of the best and bravest surfers alive, with a swag of awards (including two Mavericks titles, a few XXL Big Wave awards and last year’s Big Wave World Tour title). Like most of the eccentric extremists in the big-wave fraternity, he is a likable guy. That he thinks so ill of his own species is dispiriting but not that uncommon.Two arguments are routinely put forward whenever a person is killed or injured by a large shark: first, the victim entered the shark’s territory; second, the statistics of an attack are almost invisibly low compared with, say, a fatal attack by a malaria-bearing mosquito, which kills more than a million people a year. These two responses are more connected than they seem. Large sharks are described as “apex predators”, a jargonistic term that means they sit at the top of the food chain.This was not always true. Until a mere 2.6 million years ago, 20m-long megalodons ate great whites for breakfast. Neither is it true today. Since the demise of the megalodon, another species has developed tools that significantly reduce the odds in its favour.
These tools are available at most fishing and diving shops.But humans are not considered part of the natural world. Wherever they live, they manage the environment to suit themselves, for comfort or survival, but never as part of the natural order of things.Part of that environmental management includes killing mosquitoes. Here, current technology is inadequate. Malaria is unstoppable in many places and dengue is on the rise. In 2003, evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson made a startling proposal: specicide of the anopheles (Greek for “useless”) mosquito, which spreads malaria.Her rationale was persuasive: “There’s nothing sinister about extinction; species go extinct all the time. The disappearance of a few species, while a pity, does not bring a whole ecosystem crashing down: we’re not left with a wasteland every time a species vanishes.
Removing one species sometimes causes shifts in the populations of other species — but different need not mean worse.”Mosquitoes are not perceived as awesome, beautiful or majestic, so Judson was able to make her proposal without being vilified.While no one is proposing specicide, is it worth considering an extension of Judson’s logic to managing large sharks?Despite the ethos that underlies most scientific research and popular sentiment towards nature, not all change is for the worse. Nature itself is constantly changing. And people who wish to manage their own environment — even for recreational purposes such as swimming, surfing and diving — are not automatically on the wrong side. If you oppose culling, that’s fine. Knock yourself out.
Go swimming with them if you like. But spare me the faux sympathy next time someone is killed. These deaths are not necessary.Fred Pawle is The Australian’s surfing writer.
beastsurf
> 9 months ago, 11 Jul 2015
Its not helped so far has it
