Killing sharks ≠ safer beaches. Photo: Shutterstock | Sergey Uryadnikov
Surfers for Cetaceans is opposed to the shark culling program, that has been enacted by the West Australian government, in the name of making the beaches safer. S4C supports science, education and non-lethal solutions to co-existence with sharks.
While we, as surfers (who also often enjoy other adventurous activities on or in the sea) acknowledge that there is an element of risk in our passion to ride waves in a shared space with sharks and other marine inhabitants, we cannot condone baiting, netting, killing and dumping at sea of sharks, which in itself will create more issues than it can ever solve.
We have seen how the same procedures off Queensland beaches has resulted in unacceptable ongoing entanglements, hookings and drownings of dolphins, juvenile whales, turtles and other marine life.
Furthermore, it is self-evident that laying out bait along the coast is attracting sharks in closer, that netting is ineffective and mainly exists now for fear of litigation against local councils in event of an attack. The reckless industry of hero cage diving and “sport” fishers targeting sharks by chumming the waters off the coast with cow carcasses and other terrestrial mammal flesh and blood has lead to attacks on hapless surfers around the corner.
Naturally, we have every sympathy for shark attack victims and their families but the relative danger to Australians by sharks is massively outweighed by a litany of activities and personal life choices that involve risk or plain recklessness.
In this country, the statistics for death and loss of body parts due to smoking tobacco (or being subjected to cigarette smoke) places smoking as a public enemy number one with a loss of 18,000 Australians per year.
Alcohol, drug, pharmaceutical and junk-food choices account for the death and debilitating health issues that make the danger posed by sharks pale into insignificance.
As we all know, every time we get into a car it is a choice that could lead to devastating consequences that far outweigh lethal attack or crippling by sharks.
It is inevitable that with our great love for the sea comes an inherent respect for such a crucial element of our lives.
Sharks, the magnificent streamlined marvels and electro-magnetic masters of the seas for the past 420 million years, are not focused at all on targeting humans. Ironically, sharks are so targeted by humans that they are in a massive decline, disappearing at an alarming rate due to rapacious overfishing, netting and the loathsome shark-finning trade.
Sharks, have long-suffered the most exaggerated bad press imaginable and a ruthless exploitation that has reached an unprecedented level of some 100 million of them being killed every year.
As with our new appreciation of other wild animals now teetering on total extinction, we are just coming to know and be impressed with the shark in a whole new way.
The interaction by divers who enthusiastically engage in free swimming with sharks has revealed a curious, intelligent, usually benign and often timid side to these awe-inspiring and important custodians of the sea.
S4C, with support from most of the surf community, stands in solidarity with the many other marine-based conservation groups around Australia and the wider world. We are united in a bid to see an educated understanding of the shark outside of the traditional fear-based model and to have a sensible scientifically based approach to finding a non-lethal way to allow the shark to exist alongside humans. This would fulfill its longstanding role in maintaining the ecological diversity of the sea.
