I'm not sure how common this knowledge is, but do you guys realise the nets only go along the bottom of the ocean? No all the way from the seabed to the water surface. This basically means any shark, big or small, can get into the netted area if it's swimming withing around 5 metres of the surface.

Sham1984 said...


plus a guy like you (who loves sharks and marine life) should be pushing for these "solutions" (whether they work or not) to the councils as an alternative to culling.

No I shouldn't...because netting is worse than a shark cull from an ecological point of view. It doesn't just catch and kill sharks but it catches and kills almost anything big enough to get tangled in it, dolphins and turtles included.

As for my solutions...I only have one. "Stay out of the water if you refuse to accept the risk"

That's my TEMPORARY solution to a problem that is far more sophisticated to be fixed with a knee jerk reaction.

PaddlePig said...

Enough's enough! Extinct the bastards! The world hasn't ended from lack of dodos and tasmanian tigers, seriously, extinct them!

There was an article in the paper this morning (not that you can take their crap as the gospel, especially in a city with one newspaper) and it said more and more surfers are wanting something done and I agree.

If you're too afraid to surf with sharks in the water, take up a different sport.

Shark nets, like Subasurf said, only block a few metres of the verticle water profile. Not to mention all the other 'innocent' fish/marine animals that get caught up.

People need to sack up. We still have less than 1 person per year taken on average. No matter what way you look at statistics, that is a tiny number.

Sharks are amazing creatures, and if you take some time to learn a little about them, you can really appreciate how incredible they are.

Dawn Patrol said...

PaddlePig said...

Enough's enough! Extinct the bastards! The world hasn't ended from lack of dodos and tasmanian tigers, seriously, extinct them!

There was an article in the paper this morning (not that you can take their crap as the gospel, especially in a city with one newspaper) and it said more and more surfers are wanting something done and I agree.

If you're too afraid to surf with sharks in the water, take up a different sport.

Shark nets, like Subasurf said, only block a few metres of the verticle water profile. Not to mention all the other 'innocent' fish/marine animals that get caught up.

People need to sack up. We still have less than 1 person per year taken on average. No matter what way you look at statistics, that is a tiny number.

Sharks are amazing creatures, and if you take some time to learn a little about them, you can really appreciate how incredible they are.

Well actually if we are talking netting a individual beach. So we take Cottesloe because its the worst for fatalities than its only 1 every TEN years or so. People need to look at the figures objectively..

I've solo climbed some hard routes up mountains in the French Alps and had friends die doing it. Also had friends die on K2, Everest, recently one died climbing in Pakistan and the list goes on.

How is this related? Well, no one forces us to go climbing and no one forces us to go in the water. It's dangerous but we take the risk into consideration, consider the reward and make our choices. I don't go crying that we need a cable car to the summit of Annapurna because 38% of climbers are killed climbing it.

It's a bit of a stretch to compare the two, but really..no one forces us to go surfing/diving. It's always been a risky activity. Sack up and do it.
Next thing you know we'll all have to wear helmets.

As for the current...well, the Leeuwin Current is influenced heavily by the ENSO cycles and it is a La-Nina year so who knows. May have some role to play. Although the mechanics on how the LC effects our coast is pretty much unknown.

jbshack said...

Guy had a spinal injury and broke his collarbone surfing. How many people nearly drowned yesterday. I helped three people in..

Out of interest where about's did that all happen?

thommo 000 said...

Maybe this years been a bit different with the current down there, i've heard of divers who consistently dive down sth that have seen large schools of mackerel that they've never encountered before, even whale sharks and such? i seem to recall reading about a charter operator even setting up for marlin?.

There have been regular reports of people catching Mudcrabs in the Peel Estuary...

Those muddies (and cray puerulus) went down on the current years ago, it dumped'em in a few spots along the coast, it takes them a while to grow you know.

A lot of pelagic fish moved south this year, with the water temp up, some of the smaller local species that stayed ended up dieing, so there might have been more food for the predators to hang around for down there?

Just something else to think about as well as whales.

Or maybe the sharks decided to stay rather than head north, no use heading up there if the foods come to them is it?

Bet a few puerulus went south this year too?....if the whales didn't eat'em all lol.

I don't know as much about it as you suba.......just sayin.

The figures are misleading, with the changes in the current year to year, the puerulus can easily be swept away from the locations where they record the counts, just because the figures dont show high numbers doesnt mean there arent as many around as previous years, they have just shifted direction, from memory the last few seasons have had a poor puerulus count with predictions of bad cray seasons, yet the last couple of seasons the cray boys have been stopped within a few months because their catches have been so high.