I have surfed and speared all around rotto for ages and the likely hood of seeing a shark let alone being attacked by one is slim to none. Trying to cull a species that can swim up to 70km a day and migrate from as far away as south africa and south aus wont do any good. If the goverment is really that concerned they should give a rebate on the purchase of shark shields for concerned public ocean users.

rscaife said...

Great White sharks are not an endangered species and they should not be protected. They have become a clear and indiscriminate threat to humans across the globe and they need to be culled, if not outright hunted to extinction. As apex predators, they lie at the very end of the foodchain, and their elimination would be largely inconsequential from an ecological perspective.

Guys like you aren't endangered species and this is real bad news for our ecosystems :-(

Joe Cron said...

But there are some upsides. Your friends and relatives get to trot out the 'died doing what he loved' cliche' at your funeral.

It's a way cooler way to go than lung cancer from smoking ciggies.

You can still give the 'He died from doing what he loved' eulogy from a ciggies death [}:)]

On the shark topic;

Is there some way sharks could be tagged with something similar to those electronic collars that are put on dogs?
The one where the dog gets a collar which gives it an electric shock when it gets close to an invisible boundary line on a property.

If it was feasible and I'm sure it could be in this day & age, I'd envision this type of scenario;

Get the game fishers in for the catch and release of the GWs; have them do the catching/berleying up well offshore to encourage the GWs to be more inclined to be out there rather than closer to shore.

While the GW is on the line, it gets tagged, the tag incorporates the electronic shock collar.
Then place beacons around the beaches/areas where we don't want the GWs to habit with their presence.
The beacons could be solar & wave powered, if the shark gets too close to the electronic boundary line, it gets a shock & is deterred from going further; I'm sure they'd be smart enough to make the connection between pain & location.

The tags would also be able to supply data about the GWs movements and coupled with the increased numbers of tagging due to the gamefishing, means more data for study giving a much more comprehensive picture of the GWs habits.

Surely a win-win for all?

here's some reading again:

theconversation.com/cull-or-be-killed-is-this-really-the-solution-to-stop-shark-attacks-3961

saw a shark at St Kilda today in shallows.. not soo exciting tho was only a Wobbagong i think, still was cool to follow it around a bit..

Thanks for the references regarding predator studies. The Science article certainly deserves careful examination, although at first glance the described effects of apex predator decline do not appear to match the catastrophic environmental collapse that some on this forum predict will take place upon resumption of GW fishing. Rather, there is solid evidence (published in Nature) that fingers commercial fishing of the oceans at industrial levels as one of the most profoundly environment destabilising activities. Thus, while culling GW sharks is unpallatable to many, grinding up millions of tuna fish to make pet food may be a much greater environmental folly.

I still think someone out there has the technology for producing buoys that emit a similar, but much stronger, more wide ranging pulse as the Shark Sheildz do. Several of these buoys placed 100m or so off beaches as a kind of "virtual", net *might* have the desired effect......if of course it can be proven that the pulse idea does actually work on the GW's receptors etc.

dachopper said...

Or put more shark nets out

On thursday they pulled a 3 - 4meter great white in from a shark net off bar beach.

On Friday I flew along the beach from Birubi to Stockton and saw 5 x 3-4 meter whites, spaced around a km apart, 30-40 metres from the beach, just outside where the tiny waves were starting to break, swimming parallel to the shore.


Hot water & flat conditions always brings them closer to shore, I never see them around the surf zone when it's not flat.

is that just because they're harder to see because the vis is worse? They would be where they are because of the chance of food wouldn't they? dont think they'd be miles out to see if it's kilometers deep and there's nothing there

www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/shark-attacks/maps/australia/

How about we spread the rumour that they taste like abalone and that fisheries are introducing a fishing season starting January 2012.

I recon the problem would be solved by end of November 2011

Lets start killing a few humans there is a lot of trash out there leave the sharks be.

stamp said...

^^^don't start another shark culling discussion, there are more of them than arguments about strapped v unstrapped.

sorry to hear about the fatality, condolences to family