The risk of a shark attack when diving inshore waters of Western Australia

[clownfishsydney]

So if you went for a trip to the NT and saw a sign that said don't jump into the billabong because of the crocodiles you'd ignore it and go for a swim. I mean, after all, how many people get killed by crocodiles and you're a tough Aussie male right?

I have been to NT and FNQ (Far Northern Queensland for non-Oz readers) and have seen many billabongs with signs like that. Have I swum in them? Some, yes. Some, no. Why did I swim in the ones that I did? Because I did some risk assessment and decided that the chances of me being taken by a croc were so low as to be no risk. Why did I not swim in others? For exactly the opposite reason, I decided that the chances of attack were extremely high. How did I do this assessment? I looked at the environment of the water, the clearness, the amount of vegetation close to the water's edge where crocs could hide, the depth of the water etc.

It is like this with sharks. Would I dive off the Neptune Islands in South Australia without a cage. Never? Would I dive on HMAS Swan in WA, yes I would and yes I have. Would I dive at Rottnest Island? Yes I would and I have. Did I dive in Botany Bay in NSW when great white sharks were eating a dead whale only a kilometre away? Yes, because I figured that GWS would prefer to eat whale blubber than a diver.

 

[Ste Wart]

Foxfish,

just accept it that 99% of this forum don't agree with you.

 

[Foxfish]

It is like this with sharks. Would I dive off the Neptune Islands in South Australia without a cage. Never? Would I dive on HMAS Swan in WA, yes I would and yes I have. Would I dive at Rottnest Island? Yes I would and I have. Did I dive in Botany Bay in NSW when great white sharks were eating a dead whale only a kilometre away? Yes, because I figured that GWS would prefer to eat whale blubber than a diver.

On what basis did you decide that diving Neptune Islands was too dangerous without protection? How many fatal shark attacks in a year along our SW and southern coastline do you consider are too many?

---------- Post added February 19th, 2014 at 06:57 PM ----------

Foxfish,

just accept it that 99% of this forum don't agree with you.

The thread is intended to give divers a forum to discuss how they would assess the risk of a shark attack and mitigate that risk? I'm more interested in the quality of the reasoning behind a persons stated position than numbers.

 

[live&dive]

The risk of getting attacked by a shark is so close to nil that I do nothing to mitigate that risk and that nothing should be done to mitigate the virtually non existent risk. I live near mountains and I don't think we need to go kill all the bears and mountain lions in order to avoid an attack. If we choose to live or play in or near the wild we have to accept some risk as inherent. The risk of a fall or hypothermia is far more likely than being attacked by the bear or mountain lion. The risk of drowning is especially high on some beaches due to rip currents whereas the risk of shark attack is negligible. How many people visit any given beach per day 365 days a year. How many people drown? Two shark fatalities? Give me a break. It isn't an epidemic that warrants culling already endangered and at risk species. Keep killing the sharks off and 50 years from now no one will get the pleasure of being able to see such a magnificent creature. I would expect a diver to have a greater appreciation for sharks than what I have read.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

The Western Australian government has now publicly acknowledged it has a duty of care in this matter to ensure the safety of people who enter the ocean and that duty of care takes priority over protecting white pointers. As such, they need to take all practicable measures to achieve that end. Clearly they have identified that removing the threat ie. culling sharks, is the most practicable and effective way of achieving this.

Fly in the ointment with this ... POLITICIANS Too often their decisions are based on perceptions of what they believe will gain favour with the most voters. When is the next election in WA????

IMHO the first practical measures should involve public awareness and education. The sharks belong in the ocean we do not! If we insist on invading their territory we should accept the consequences! The risks are so low that I can not see any justification for killing more sharks. Too many are killed by humans already!

I don't live in your country and don't profess to understand how wild animals that pose a threat to humans are controlled. Even if I did, it would be presumptuous to try to dictate how it should or shouldn't be done.

I never lived in the US but in Canada where encounters with bears, cougars, mountain lions and moose were common more common than shark attacks here. Now I am fortunate enough to live in NSW Australia. I am embarrassed that this culling program is being done in my country.

My only problem with this is that after a shark has eaten someone it is probably not going to be very hungry so the chance of an attack seems to be diminished compared to what it was prior to the attack. In other words, to be consistent, the beaches in an area should be closed and people ordered from the water whenever a man-eating shark is seen in an area. That is now happening.

This strategy of alerting the public and closing beaches could work if you had the following conditions:

- You had a way of detecting the presence of all man-eating sharks in an area;
- You had authorities present that could act quickly once a man-eating shark was detected;
- People in the water were compliant and got out of the water as required and
- This did not occur too frequently.

The problem on a lot of our local beaches is that these conditions often do not occur. In fact if you check the statistics most of the recent deaths occurred on beaches where these conditions were not present.

..........The problems start with detecting the presence of man-eating sharks.

Aerial surveillance is useful but again is limited in the area it can cover. In the case I mentioned regarding the OW students encounter with a white pointer, by the time the shark was spotted and a vessel deployed to notify the students of the presence of the shark it was too late. They had already seen the shark.

I have checked the Surf Life Saving website prior to a dive on a number of occasions only to discover there has been a man-eating shark in the are in the past few days. I've then done the dive and seen the surveillance helicopter patrolling the area.

On one occasion I went home and discovered a person had been knocked off their board and a white pointer spotted in the area near where we were diving.

On another occasion I was on a dive charter boat at the time this man was killed and a only few kilometres away. We were ordered out of the water.

Australia shark attack: George Thomas Wainwright killed near Rottnest Island | Mail Online

In short, the frequency of sightings of man-eating sharks has now got to the stage where the shark alert system is becoming impracticable even in those areas where they can be detected.

My problem with all of the above is that a shark can not be determined to be a "man-eater" until it eats a man! I just don't see the logic of killing a creature because it has the capacity to kill a human! More people die every year from bee stings but nobody is launching a bee eradication process! We all know that removing bees from the ecosystem would have disastrous consequences. I had hoped that Australia of all places would have learned consequences of interfering with the natural order of things. Have we learned nothing from what happened with Rabbits, Foxes, and recently cane toads?:doh:

 

[Foxfish]

As mentioned before, risk is a function of frequency of an outcome and level of exposure. I walk out my door and I'm exposed to bees and the possibility of getting stung.

Culling of vermin and native animals that posed a threat to life and livelihood has been a fact of life ever since the days of early settlement in this country and likely in your home country as well.

Culling of sharks has been ongoing in both Queensland and NSW for many years and has been found to be very effective and minimizing the risk of attack. Even the ABC notorious for its support of left wing ideology:

Cookies must be enabled. | The Australian

has to acknowledge these measures have been effective.

Historical shark attack figures suggest that the use of shark nets and drumlines does markedly reduce the incidence of shark attack when implemented on a regular and consistent basis.

In Queensland, there has been only one fatal attack on a controlled beach since 1962, compared to 27 fatal attacks between 1919 and 1961.Statistics from the NSW Department of Primary Industries indicate that before nets were introduced in NSW in 1936 there was an average of one fatal shark attack every year. There has been only one fatal attack on a protected beach since then and that was in 1951. Similarly, between 1943 and 1951 the South African city of Durban experienced seven fatal attacks but there have been none since nets were introduced in 1952. A more recent comparison shows that in South Africa there were three shark attacks, none fatal, at protected beaches in KwaZulu-Natal between 1990 and 2011, while there were 20 fatal attacks in the same period at unprotected beaches in the Eastern and Western Cape Provinces.


Experts tell Fact Check that culling needs to be undertaken consistently to be effective. Alison Kock, a marine biologist and the research manager at Shark Spotters (responsible for the shark safety program at Cape Town, South Africa) says that "culling on an opportunistic and irregular basis, such as culling following an attack, does not seem to be very effective in reducing risk". An example given by Ms Kock is the Hawaiian program that ran off and on over two decades. Dr Carl Meyer of the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology told Fact Check the culling program in that instance was ineffective in reducing shark numbers and shark bite incidents. "White sharks and tiger sharks are both highly mobile species, so limited culling is unlikely to demonstrably change the already incredibly low risk of being bitten by them," he said.

Scientists have advised the quantity of catch on drum lines deployed in the West will not adversely affect the environment. I was around for many years prior to the protection of the white pointer when the number of fatal attacks was significantly less than it is today and when their numbers were much lower based on the evidence at hand. No one was suggesting back then that the marine environment was about to collapse. My experience suggests that fish stocks back then were much better than they are today.

I see no reason not to use drum lines to lower the risk of shark attack in our local waters providing the program is sensibly managed. I'd prefer to see the animals caught and eaten if possible but understand there may be good reason not to do this.

I'd expect that if you are philosophically opposed to killing animals it could be a problem. I'm not. I enjoy spearing fish and eating them. I've killed many animals and eaten them. How about you?

As for the use of the term man-eater I view it as just another form of petty political correctness and censorship.

 

[gcarter]

As for the use of the term man-eater I view it as just another form of petty political correctness and censorship.

I view it as sensationalist. Correctness != political correctness.

Nobody is censoring you. Get your head out of your ass.

 

[Foxfish]

...and one that is frequently resorted to by those bereft of any ability to cobble together any argument of substance to fortify their stated position. Coupled with vulgar ad hominem attacks, these characteristics make them easy to identify. Refer to the previous post for a typical exhibit of such a specimen.

 

[drbill]

Well, actually the term "man-eater" is an appropriate one. I keep telling the ladies I encounter who are worried about great whites that they have little to fear because only about 7% of attacks are on females and 93% on males.

 

[Namreg 58]

Well, actually the term "man-eater" is an appropriate one. I keep telling the ladies I encounter who are worried about great whites that they have little to fear because only about 7% of attacks are on females and 93% on males.

Could that be deemed to be " professional courtesy " ?????