Woodo said...l i don't understand why the government isn't doing anything about it now when they seem to be around in greater numbers.
And trust me i wouldn't bother battering anything over 5 foot.
The thing is, they ARE doing something about it. Shark tagging has been done for years and is an ongoing project...and the data collected suggests nothing about an increase in shark numbers. Just because more have been sighted this year doesn't mean the population has increased. Other variables have come in to play to keep the sharks hanging around the shore. That's what needs to be addressed, not the shark population itself, which still happens to be at an unfortunately low level.
You could cull off more Great Whites (putting them at a far greater danger of extinction) and still have them popping up along our beaches every time a whale carcass washes into shore.
As for ones 'lurking' along the coast...as far as I'm aware (this is educated opinion, not fact) there are not many sharks actually lurking around permanently. Tag data suggests nothing along these lines.
Having said all that, I do agree that in the long term something does need to happen. We can't have people being killed every year if we can avoid it. But a cull would be a typical human knee-jerk reaction to what is most likely a man-made problem. We have an atrocious track record in Australia for doing the wrong thing environmentally. I'd hate for this to be just another to add to the list.
There is still plenty of research to be done (horray, it'll keep me employed) and in the meantime it is my personal opinion that we need to just suck it up and accept the risk and work towards a sustainable and ecologically responsible LONG-TERM solution.
