Whatever research is conducted at the federal government’s new $24 million science hub in Tasmania, where ways to “lower the risk of human-shark encounters” are being investigated, it will be too late for Ben Gerring and Doreen Collyer.
Gerring, 29, was attacked by a great white while surfing near Mandurah, south of Perth, on May 31, and died in hospital three days later. Collyer, 60, was attacked while diving a kilometre off Perth’s northern beaches on June 5, and died at the scene. She was the 21st known fatality in Australia since 2008 (several other unexplained disappearances, including that of Jake Barrett on Lord Howe Island in December and Martin Tann in Perth in 2013, may or may not have been caused by sharks).
The science hub was announced by federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt in October last year and joins a long list of official attempts to placate both ocean users, who are increasingly worried about being attacked, and environmentalists, who believe that many shark species, especially great whites, are either threatened or perform such a crucial role in the delicate marine environment that they cannot be tampered with.
The policy by most governments has been to pump millions of dollars into research and mitigation strategies. Ocean users are now growing tired of both. More than a decade of research has yielded little useful and sometimes contradictory information, and mitigation strategies, such as the now postponed and almost certainly futile plan to install a barrier net across the beach at Ballina, northern NSW, are either expensive, impractical or seemingly ineffective.
Nevertheless, Hunt is careful not to alarm green swinging voters. Asked if he envisaged the protection of great whites might be lifted soon, he simply said: “Listings are determined by the threatened species scientific committee.”
Reminded that the increasing frequency of shark attacks was having a depressing effect on coastal communities and tourism, he replied with a link to the news release from October about the new science hub and its various projects and mitigation strategies.
The increasingly key issue is great white population size, which the hub is now assessing. This follows last August’s population assessment, the first in Australian history, made by the CSIRO’s Barry Bruce, which found there were between 750 and 1200 adult great whites (excluding the burgeoning number of juveniles) off the east coast of Australia.
In an interview with the Hobart Mercury at the time, Bruce said the number “does not yet tell us ... whether the population is going up or down”. This was despite Bruce being a co-author of the 2002 Great White Recovery Plan, whose objective was, and still is, to “identify and reduce the threats to white sharks, determine levels of mortality and reduce that mortality”. In other words, increase the population.
Last week, experts from the West Australian fishing industry begged to differ with Bruce’s inconclusiveness. Norman Moore, the former West Australian fisheries minister and present chairman of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, in a rare public statement on the topic, told me: “It seems logical that by protecting a species, their number will grow. There is an argument to be had for reintroducing great white shark fishing in Australia.”
Fishing company Southwestern Fresh Fish, of Bunbury, posted on its Facebook page that “in our opinion they (great whites) are definitely increasing”, and that the time of year during which great whites prevailed had grown from two months to eight.
In a statement, West Australian Fishing Industry Council chief executive John Harrison said reopening the Perth shark fishery “could benefit public safety and give a much-needed boost to the supply of premium seafood to the metropolitan market”.
Another expert, who declined to be named, said 20 to 30 great whites were being caught off Perth each year until protection was imposed in 1999, and that the first generation of great whites born into protection were now themselves breeding. “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that that will have a compounding effect,” he said.
Trying to predict the behaviour of these sharks has been the primary focus of much of the research in Australia. Bruce told the ABC in 2006 that “information about where sharks are likely to be … can be used to … look after people”.
However, a report co-authored by Bruce and published by the West Australian Department of Fisheries in April says such information is “unlikely”. The report, the result of one of the most extensive shark-tagging operations in the world (monitoring hundreds of tagged great whites, tigers and bronze whalers between Neptune Islands in South Australia and Exmouth in Western Australia over seven years), found that great white movements were “highly variable” and “not consistent”. It also conceded that “it is unlikely that a greater period of data collection will generate an overall predictive model”.
There have been two concentrated spikes in fatal attacks in Australia in recent years — in northern NSW from 2013-15 and the southwest from 2010-13. Despite their extensive research, experts failed to predict either event.
This month, the DoF said it was dismantling the listening stations of the research network (though the listening stations that form its live reporting and warning network will remain). Asked if this was an admission that research using shark tags provided limited insights to great white behaviour, the department’s spokeswoman said: “The department is always interested in any research on shark fisheries and research, and keen to look at any new research that has been peer reviewed.”
The West Australian government has tried to keep both sides of the debate at bay for years. In 2012, at the height of a spate of fatalities in the state, it announced a policy that enabled the destruction of any lethal shark that threatened “imminent attack”. The policy placated ocean users but, despite countless sightings at swimming beaches since then, the policy has only been enacted twice (at Dunsborough in 2013 and Warnbro Sound in 2014).
This is the sort of bureaucratic indecision that Don Munro, the president of the Le-Ba Boardriders Club on the other side of the country, at Ballina, where shark sightings are an almost daily occurrence, is familiar with.
As part of the NSW government’s $16m five-year plan, a barrier net was planned for the beach at North Wall, Ballina, originally intended to be installed in January. When surfers learnt of the location of the barrier — straight through the main break at North Wall, which would actually make the beach more dangerous for surfing — their objections caused the project to be postponed. Had it not been postponed, the massive swell that wreaked havoc along the NSW coast last week would have “smashed (the net) into a million pieces” anyway, Munro says. “We told them (the state government) it wasn’t going to work. They said, ‘It’s a trial period, let’s just see what happens. If it doesn’t work we will sit down with you then and talk about it.’ I think they’ve made some contractual arrangement to do it, so they are definitely going ahead with it. That’s bureaucracy for you.”
Munro says he isn’t against the government providing strategies to make surfing safer but is determined that whatever is implemented is not futile. “I’m not backing off,” he says. “If you back off, so do they, so I’m like a blue heeler about it.”
Dave Pearson, the co-founder of Bite Club, a support group for attack survivors and friends and relatives of victims, says he has recently detected a slight change in public mood about sharks.
After Ben Gerring’s death on June 3, a debate sprang up on social media about whether donating money to his widow and unborn child was a good idea. Usually in such situations, Pearson says, the debate quickly becomes heated. “But I noticed we got a lot of support from people who wouldn’t normally support us,” he said. “There were a lot of people saying, ‘Show a little respect, there’s a time and a place to express those opinions.’
“People are seeing that there are families out there getting hurt, and giving them some time to grieve. It was a nice change.”
Bureaucratic change will probably be slower. As well as Minister Hunt, I contacted Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce and Assistant Minister Anne Ruston, who is responsible for fisheries, for a comment. Neither was interested.
But if protection of great whites was removed, what would their value be to fishermen? Distasteful as it may be to some people, their greatest value is in their jaws, says veteran South Australian shark fisherman Jeff Schmucker. He recalls jaws changing hands for $5000 before protection was imposed. “Even back then it was under the table,” he said. “They weren’t being openly sold.”
Schmucker also recalls tasting the flesh back when doing so was still legal. “It’s beautiful, if you get one of the small ones,” he said. “It tastes like swordfish.”
Great white has a reputation for being unappetising and contaminated with mercury, but Schmucker says this only applies to older specimens.
It might take a clever marketing campaign to alleviate concerns about the flavour and health implications of eating great white, but there is probably no shortage of surfers, swimmers and divers who would give it a go.
