Fins not always as they seem
THE recent Discovery Channel Shark Week program has stirred opinions and emotions on the issue of shark attacks and shark culling.
For some people, when they hear news of a shark attack, coexistence between sharks and humans seems impossible.
Yet shark attacks are extremely rare. In Victoria, a shark has not killed anyone in more than three decades and, according to Deakin University ecologist and predator expert, Associate Professor Euan Ritchie, culling is not the way to prevent attacks, and further endangers sharks.
“The reasons why people may or may not experience lethal or harmful interactions with sharks are varied and often hard to determine,” Prof Ritchie said. “Sharks don’t set out to attack humans.”
He suggests that when a shark attack does occur, community fear tends to overtake practical thinking, inflamed by sensationalist media coverage.
“Unnecessary panic spreads and people begin to point fingers; usually at great white sharks, even though they are often not responsible for many shark ‘attacks’ in Australia,” he said.
“Sharks are sometimes described as ‘ mindless killing machines’, or a ‘menace to our waters’, and our instant reaction seems to be to try to kill them.”
Prof Ritchie argues that the problem often lies with people entering the shark’s natural habitat — the world’s oceans.
He says that environmental factors affect where sharks migrate and feed and reproduce.
“Changes in water currents and temperature can play a role in where sharks are likely to be, as too do movements of shark’s preferred prey,” he said.
“It’s also important to recognise that sharks have always lived in both nearshore and offshore environments. This is their habitat.
“It’s entirely unnecessary, ineffective, and ecologically harmful to try to cull them.
“It’s symptomatic of the inability of humans to peacefully coexist with other species, including large predators.
“As apex predators, sharks help maintain the balance of the species below them in the food chain and promote healthy and diverse ecosystems.”
A Victorian Fisheries Authority spokesman has noted that Victoria doesn’t have control measures, such as nets or drumlins, in place.
Instead, Victoria has a “multi-agency shark hazard prevention system” that involves community education, reporting of shark sightings, aerial patrols during the peak summer period, and management of heightened risk situations, such as whale carcasses.
Prof Ritchie agrees that education about risk factors associated with shark attacks is the most effective strategy.
“Education will improve community understanding that the risk of a shark attack is a minuscule, much less than everyday risks such as driving a car or crossing a road,” he said.
“Importantly, education will help people change their behaviour and increase their safety, such as being aware of what conditions to avoid when swimming in the ocean.
“Instead of hunting sharks into extinction to ‘resolve’ the issue, we should be taking precautions while in the water. Swim in patrolled areas and closer to shore.”
Swimming near the shark’s prey, schools of fish, seabirds or dolphins, also increases risk.
But humans must accept the risks of sharing the marine environment with sharks. The destruction of an entire species should never be the answer.