Investigation: alarming rise in shark attacks
Australia has the highest rate of fatal shark attacks in the world, but how to tackle the issue is a matter of great public controversy, particularly in Western Australia. As Ingrid Pyne reports, even the relatives of victims are divided on the issue.
AS THEY DID every morning, Rob and Christine Armstrong made the short drive from their home, down the hill, to the Tathra Surf Life Saving Club, on New South Wales’ pristine Sapphire Coast. There they met up with four friends: Judy Rettke, the club’s president, Patrick Barry, Mary Davis and Colleen Boulton. The group chatted as they slipped into wetsuits. It was around 8am on
April 3, 2014, when they stood ready on Tathra beach. The weather was sunny, the water flat and clear, and there was no seaweed. It was a great day for a swim.
Their destination was the Old Tathra Wharf, the last remaining sea wharf on our east coast. The swim is 600 metres if you head straight out to sea and then dog-leg it south towards the wharf; 450 metres if you swim diagonally across to the historic timber wharf. It would take them 25 minutes, and they would then head
out for coffee. Rob and Christine, who had arrived in Tathra 14 years earlier, had made firm friends. Rob reckons they instructed 300 to 400 residents in their bronze medallion.
Rob, the strongest swimmer, was leading Judy, Colleen, Patrick and Mary the long way round. Christine, whose bad back was playing up, had decided to take things easy. Rob imagines she was lying on her back in the water, doing the stretches she had been given by her physiotherapist.
Rob had reached the wharf and was on his way back to shore, Colleen at his shoulder, when a giant seagull swooped. After a lifetime in the ocean, Rob knew what this could mean. He stopped swimming, and raised his head. His instincts were correct. There, not 25 metres from him, was a shark. A huge beast of a thing.
Hours later, Rob would tell police and the media it was a bronze whaler. Now he realises it couldn’t have been. “The size was far too big – it was the size of the whale,” he tells The Weekly.
“I was in a state of shock then. I have a relatively clear recollection of the details now.”
To Rob, the great white seemed to lie calmly on top of the water for 20 seconds, long enough for him to grab Patrick and point it out to him. Patrick saw the same thing Rob did: a bright pink swimming cap in the shark’s jaws. Then it slid silently beneath the water.
Rob’s 12 years of life saving training kicked in. Mary was swimming directly towards the shark so he moved quickly to intercept her. He herded her and Patrick into shore, still struggling to process what was happening. “I think deep down I knew the truth. Your mind has a protective mechanism. It was helping me to do my job. My job was to keep everyone safe.”
Back on shore, there was no sign of Chris. Rob grabbed an IRB (inflatable rescue boat) from the surf club and headed out to sea with Patrick and another life saver. He scanned the waters, in search of his wife of 44 years. “The only thing we found were her intestines,” he says. Later that afternoon, a search team found Chris’s goggles and bright pink swimming cap.
“The shark actually ate her,” he says, disbelievingly. “That’s really unusual.”
Rob is right. While there have been reported cases of great white sharks consuming people whole, they tend to view humans less as food, more as threats to their food or objects of curiosity. Typically, when a great white bites a human, it takes one exploratory bite before retreating. That’s why most victims live to tell the tale, despite the shark’s size and power.
Even in Australia, which has the highest number of fatal shark attacks in the world, the risk of death from shark bite is tiny: there has been a yearly average of 1.1 fatalities over the past 20 years. You have far more chance of dying by lightning or falling out of bed.
And yet the hysteria surrounding great whites goes on. In the 41 years since Steven Spielberg’s Jaws hit the screen, sharks have been cemented in our minds as man-eating monsters. Every shark encounter is reported breathlessly around the world.
Although the number of shark bites in Australia – and worldwide – has risen over the past 40 years, scientists say it is no cause for alarm. It can be explained by human population growth and higher numbers of ocean users and, probably, a stabilisation or slight increase in the number of great whites.
“Shark bites still fall into a very specific statistical category as rare and random events,” says Dr Christopher Neff, a shark bite researcher at the University of Sydney.
Just two days after Chris’s death, Rob was back swimming at the scene of her attack.
“Why wouldn’t I go back out there? It doesn’t make any sense not to,” he says. Rob also felt another, higher calling – to lead the Tathra community back into the ocean Chris had so loved.
“Compare the health benefits of people who swim in the ocean – both physically and psychologically – against the risk of being taken by a shark, and I’ll tell you the country is a lot better
“Then they saw it: a bright pink swimming cap in the shark’s jaws.”
off because people still swim in the ocean,” says Rob. “So I had a job to do talking to the parents of the Nippers at Tathra to explain what the real, actual risks are. It worked, because a couple of the parents said, ‘Rob says we have to get back in the water so we are going back into the water’.”
Not everyone can shake off their primal fear. Rob admits some who returned to shore without Chris no longer swim with him. “They are too traumatised by it,” he says.
In Western Australia, where there have been 10 fatalities from great white bites in six years, many people are terrified. Recent fatal attacks on Doreen Collyer, a 60-year-old nursing lecturer, and Ben Gerring, a 29-year-old expectant father, within the space of a week, heightened community fears.
Professor Jessica Meeuwig, Director of the Centre for Marine Futures at the University of Western Australia, says random events such as shark bites often happen in clusters.
“Two fatalities in a short period of time, against a backdrop of one fatality per year over the past 20 years, makes it very difficult to say there’s an actual increase,” she says.
Scientists, like Jessica, rely on longterm data to determine if our beaches are getting more dangerous. But swimmers don’t have that luxury. “It [the recent spate of attacks in WA] is hitting our tourism, it’s having a massive impact on our Nippers programs,” says Perth shark survivor Brian Sierakowski.
And so the pressure has been on the WA government for solutions. Since 2008, it has spent $30 million on aerial and beach patrols, research into shark population and shark behaviour, acoustic tagging, jet skis, watch towers, shark deterrent technologies, beach enclosures and public education. Yet all anyone seems to focus on is its failed drum line scheme, conducted for three months in 2014, and its contentious “serious threat” policy, which allows potentially dangerous sharks in close proximity to populated areas to be hunted and killed.
Most shark scientists believe this aggressive approach is based not on science, but a desire by politicians to allay the public’s panic.
“The WA government’s policy is the worst in the world,” says Dr Neff. “They do more than just kill sharks, they demonise sharks. It’s political theatre that only helps the politicians. It’s got nothing to do with making our beaches safer.”
Sharon Burden, whose 21-year-old son Kyle was killed by a great white while body boarding at the picturesque Bunker Bay, near Margaret River, in 2011, agrees. “It’s an appalling, knee-jerk policy,” she says.
Fate may have thrown Sharon into this mix of scientists, conservationists, politicians, shark victims and shark enthusiasts, but she is determined to use her position to find meaning in the death of her only child.
“Every time a new shark incident is reported, if I went back into that space in my head when I was remembering what happened to Kyle, it would be very difficult to function,” she says. “So when these things happen, I tend to focus on talking about solutions: are we moving towards a position that’s helpful?”
Killing sharks which may or may not be responsible for an attack is not helpful, she says. She wants governments to direct cash towards improving public education and shark tagging, so we can understand the behaviours of sharks better and oceangoers can make informed decisions.
“People need to take personal responsibility for going into the water,” Sharon insists. “Things like not swimming in murky water, staying between the flags, checking apps for shark sightings, using the latest deterrent technologies. You can never 100 per cent remove the risk, it will always be there. But we can reduce the risk and then decide whether we still want to be in the ocean because the benefits outweigh the risk.”
For Sharon, the choice is clear, as it is for Rob Armstrong. She feels no fear of sharks, even while swimming at Bunker Bay. “When I am in the ocean, I think of my son, not of sharks,” she says. But she is not blind to the risks, and takes every reasonable precaution.
Dr Neff agrees the best way for us to co-exist with sharks is to take personal responsibility for risk mitigation. Several recent surveys have shown the majority of Australians now agree. They no longer support radical, lethal action after a shark bite, even a fatal one, and many don’t want shark-control programs at all, he says.
Not everyone is on that page. Brian Sierakowski believes there are rare cases where sharks go “rogue” and hang around popular beaches.
“Maybe they are not as good at catching prey anymore, maybe they have got a bit lazy, maybe they have become a bit territorial, who knows?”
Brian is a retired lawyer, not a scientist, but his terrifying encounters with great whites at least entitles him to an opinion, and it was his brush with a great white in October 1997 off Cottesloe Beach, Perth’s popular family spot, that is often cited as the start of the latest spree of attacks.
The weather that day was “sharky”. Brian, a former St Kilda ruckman, was on a double surf ski with John Hanrahan about 250 metres offshore. They were stationary, waiting to catch a wave, when a shark attacked from the beach side.
“We didn’t see anything,” Brian recalls. “All of a sudden the mouth of this 5-metre shark came crashing down 1.5 inches in front of my feet. It was like being hit by a Mack truck. I am looking down at this thing, and my mind is not processing it. I thought there’s been a volcanic eruption under sea and it’s pushed up a bollard. At that moment, John Hanrahan just said, ‘What the f*** is that?’”
Brian escaped with only a damaged surf ski and a grazed nose from the shark’s dorsal fin. He regarded the encounter as a jolly adventure and dined out on the story for ages.
But three years later, Brian was laughing no more. Early on November 6, 2000, he and John were paddling near the Cottesloe groyne when his wife came racing up the beach, screaming at them. In waist-deep water at the nearby North Cottesloe beach, in front of more than 100 onlookers, father-of-three Ken Crew had been attacked by a 4-metre great white. When Brian ran the 600 metres up the beach to North Cottesloe, he saw what the shark had done to Ken, who just that morning had hung his clothes up next to Brian’s in the surf club’s change rooms. Ken’s leg had been bitten off.
“I was in a real state,” he says. “I remember standing on my balcony, weeping openly.”
The image hardened Brian’s attitude towards great whites. “It is imperative that the government or the council has the power to kill a shark that is rogue or territorial. Regardless of what the do-gooders and activists say, you have got to get it. It’s just stupidity to say, ‘don’t kill the shark’.”
Professor Meeuwig says the notion of a “rogue” or “territorial” shark with a taste for human flesh that needs to be hunted down has long been shown to be a myth. “What we need to remember is that if great whites really liked to eat people and had really determined that we were easy pickings, we wouldn’t ever be able to go in the water.”
Bruno Mezzatesta, Executive Director, Regional Services at WA’s Department of Fisheries agrees. He denies that WA’s “serious threat” policy is a response to a belief in rogue sharks, saying it only targets highhazard sharks in close proximity to populated areas that may represent a serious threat to public safety.
He points out that, unlike in NSW and Queensland – where drum lines and shark nets regularly kill sharks – there are no such measures off WA. “The serious threat policy is currently the only time a shark may be taken as part of a shark mitigation strategy.”
Still, Rob Armstrong can’t see the point in the policy. “They are just going to upset the ecosystem. You are not going to kill every shark in the ocean. You couldn’t even if you wanted to.”
Rob now concentrates on living his life to the full – he says Christine would be “bloody angry” if he didn’t.
He still swims (a bright pink swimming cap his silent daily tribute) and rides his motorbike. Days after we speak, he is on his way to Lorne to compete in an ocean swim. Yet all this activity can’t stop the emptiness and loneliness that comes from losing a life partner. It hasn’t stopped him from grieving. Or inadvertently replaying the events of April 3 over in his mind.
“It seems ridiculous to me now that I didn’t go to assist. The only way I can explain it is that my whole training is to save those whom you can save first. That’s what you get drilled into you as a surf lifesaver,” he says. “But I still have my guilt.”
Recently he wrote a poem for Chris, which he shared with The Weekly. It contains a heartbreaking line.
I could not save you but I could have tried.
“Noah”* made a mistake that day it was me who should have died.