NET JOBS: SURFING GREAT’S SHOT AT GREENIES
AN AUSTRALIAN surfing great says members of a militant green group would change their mind on ripping out shark nets if they saw the horror of a mauled body.
Peter Drouyn, creator of the modern man-on-man surfing format, remembers the terror of shark attacks and fatalities on city beaches in the late 1950s before the State Government introduced its control program.
And if the nets and drum lines were removed, he warns there would be a shark attack within six months.
Responding to a Bulletin report yesterday that Sea Shepherd Australia wanted shark nets removed because they were archaic, ineffective and “purely a political measure”, an angry Mr Drouyn said: “I don’t suppose they’ve ever seen anyone totally mutilated by shark.
“This all gets forgotten, then you get to this age of the dogooders who become a militia and build up a platform.
“It’s a total joke to say the shark nets don’t work.”
Mr Drouyn said he was a nine-year-old bodysurfer at Surfers Paradise in 1958 when swimmer Peter Gerard Spronk was mauled 250m offshore. Mr Spronk died of his injuries despite lifesavers’ best efforts.
“The beach inspector who pulled the guy out, he went nuts, it affected so many people.”
Mr Drouyn said he remembered almost exactly a year later seeing a shark that had attacked David Beaver off North Burleigh.
“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen as a kid. They managed to catch the shark and they hung it up at Burleigh SLSC.
“It was a huge, about 4m long. That tiger shark had mutilated someone.”
Mr Drouyn recalled what it was like before the nets. “The shark alarm bell, I kid you not,
used to go off two or three times per day. People would be running out of the water all the time. Imagine what the people would go through.”
There has not been a shark fatality on the Gold Coast since the nets were installed in 1962.
Sea Shepherd Australia spokesman Jonathan Clark told the Bulletin yesterday he was tired of seeing dead turtles, dolphins and whales trapped in nets.
“We want to see the nets and drum lines gone.
“They don’t actually provide for human safety … it’s a completely redundant device.”
However Mr Drouyn, 68, said the 186m by 6m-deep shark nets staggered off Gold Coast beaches had drastically lowered the number of sharks in the surf zone.
“When I first started surfing, sharks would swim underneath me. Tiger sharks would go to sleep on the banks just off the shoreline.
“They weren’t like other sharks, which have to keep swimming to breathe (called buccal breathing). They’d come in and sleep on the floor, 10 to 12 foot (3-3.5m) long. I was only 10.
“It you took them away, within six months the sharks will be back and someone will go.
“It’s become a natural thing. They (sharks) don’t actually hang around down here now.”