Shark studies fail to halt attacks
WHILE the number of people being attacked and killed by sharks continues to increase, researchers, bureaucrats and politicians continue to find ways to blame the victims.
The latest example of this was made in an email from NSW Department of Primary Industries fisheries research director Natalie Moltschaniwskyj in May.
Dr Moltschaniwskyj was writing to Dan Webber, a surfer from Ballina, who had questioned whether the DPI’s focus on tagging sharks caught on SMART drumlines, the key part of the NSW State Government’s attackmitigation policy, was actually making the water safer for people.
Dr Moltschaniwskyj said she didn’t know whether the tagging program reduced the risk of “waterusers” (otherwise known as “people”) experiencing a “bite” (commonly known as an “attack”). “We are not suggesting that tagging is a method to reduce interactions,” she said.
Then she quoted a US report that found the tagging and later detection of sharks was a “reminder that sharks are commonly present, potentially reducing complacent behaviour and contributing to overall public education and outreach”.
According to the Cambridge Dicalways tionary, “complacent” means “feeling so satisfied with your own abilities or situation that you feel you do not need to try any harder”.
In other words, smug and ignorant. Three Australians, including 15year-old Mani Hart-Deville, have died since Dr Moltschaniwskyj wrote that email. And another young woman received serious injuries to her leg off Cairns this week.
Asked how much complacency was a factor in those attacks, Dr Moltschaniwskyj declined to say, forwarding my inquiry to the DPI’s media unit instead.
The media unit told me simply, “public safety is the number one priority when it comes to shark mitigation in NSW”.
It also said sharks were a “natural part of our environment and there is a risk when we choose to enter the water”.
The strategy of most researchers and bureaucrats has been to shift the spotlight away from what fishermen say is the unprecedented abundance and size of sharks off our beaches.
One fisherman told me the increasing numbers of sharks coming close to shore are the outliers from the main populations around reefs more than 5km offshore.
Another fisherman from the NSW south coast said a 4.5m great white recently accidentally hooked on a line was found bitten in half, presumably by another shark of a similar size.
This downplaying of human safety is a key aspect of all the research conducted in this area since great whites were protected in 1998.
The Great White Recovery Program, written by the CSIRO in 2002, made only a brief passing reference to the safety of swimmers, divers and surfers. Since then, little has changed.
The millions of dollars’ worth of research by the DPI and CSIRO, and other government departments and universities, proved to be useless to the five Australians killed this year and the dozens more since 1998.
These deaths are felt intensely among the members of Bite Club, the support group established by survivor Dave Pearson, from Coopernook on the NSW north coast, in 2011.
Fighting back tears himself, Pearson told me this week there were about 50 people in the group needing special emotional support since HartDeville’s death, many of them parents who had lost a child themselves.
“It’s very upsetting,” he said. “I’ve just come out of a bad patch myself. People are anxious about the next one.”
The “next one” happened off Fitzroy Island, only hours after we hung up the phone, although luckily it was not fatal.
There were only two fatalities in Australia in 2015; this year we have already had five.
The effect on tourism is difficult to know, given that travel is so heavily restricted these days. But there is still an interesting comparison to be made with the COVID-19 crisis.
In both instances, the response from so-called experts has been to impose restrictions that are arguably counter-productive but do help to assert the authority of experts over the great unwashed.