SMART drum lines rejected as expensive and not practical

A NON-LETHAL alternative to Queensland’s shark-killing drum lines would be an expensive, impractical white elephant that could put swimmers at risk, a government-commissioned report has found.

The Townsville Bulletin can reveal the Palaszczuk Government commissioned a report into smart drum lines in the weeks before environmentalists ultimately triumphed in their court bid to outlaw the state’s lethal shark control program.

The authors of the Cardno report found SMART drum lines – which have a GPS tracker to alert authorities when a shark is caught so they can be released – were not a “practical solution throughout the state”.

Each SMART drum line costs about $3500, with the report finding more than $1.3 million could need to be spent to replace equipment and it would cost about $400 for each shark tag.

The report determined Queensland posed “significant practical challenges” when compared to WA and NSW, where trials have taken place, because swimmers frequent waters across much of the state and that limited the areas where sharks could be safely released.

“(n some instances the difficulty of identifying locations that captured sharks can be subsequently relocated to,” the report found.

The Government removed 160 drum lines from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park after the Federal Court last month upheld the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ruling that essentially required Queensland to abide by a catch and release program.