2 days ago
‘Cruel' shark nets to be removed from Sydney's beaches
Fifty years after Steven Spielberg's Jaws panicked swimmers and surfers the world over, Sydney is preparing to banish the shark nets that have protected its beaches for nearly nine decades.
Under pressure from conservationists who argue that the nets kill hundreds of harmless marine creatures each year, Australia's largest city is preparing to remove them at some of the most popular beaches, potentially including Bondi, in time for the summer.
The city will trial the removal of some nets from December and has asked coastline councils to nominate beaches that could take part.
'We know the problems with nets are widespread, in particular around getting other species of marine life caught in those areas,' said Ryan Park, the New South Wales health minister, when announcing the trial on Monday.
Sydney had not experienced a fatal shark attack in 59 years until the British national Simon Nellist, 35, was taken by a large great white at Little Bay in the city's south in February 2022. Nellist, a certified diving instructor from Cornwall, was at an unprotected beach.
More than 50 beaches in New South Wales are protected by nets that were first installed in 1937 after a decade and a half of repeated shark attacks. In the first year of operation, Sydney's nets snared more than 600 sharks, but the number caught at the most intensively meshed sites has since declined to an average of 140 a year, most of which are released alive.
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The nets, generally about 150 metres long and six metres high, entangle sharks and other marine creatures that swim into them by chance. However, they were never a foolproof solution, as sharks could still enter shallow waters by swimming under or over the mesh.
Pressure to remove the nets has increased after official figures, released in May, showed only 11 per cent of the marine animals caught by them were potentially dangerous sharks, such as great whites. Most of the time the nets trapped harmless marine animals, including dolphins and threatened leatherback turtles.
Many popular Australian beaches now use newer technologies to guard against shark attacks. These include placing electronic tags on dangerous sharks that allow their movements to be monitored, shark surveillance drones and 'smart' drum lines — underwater cables that send out alerts when big sharks get snagged so they can be retrieved and released alive offshore.
Even shark attack victims have welcomed the move to remove the nets. Dave Pearson, a surfer who survived a severe bull shark attack in 2011, said: 'I'm up for whatever the scientists believe is the best thing to do. Where I surf we have nothing [by way of shark protection].' Pearson founded The Bite Club, an organisation for shark-attack survivors which has 500 members.
'We've all got to learn to use the ocean better and truly understand what is happening out there,' he told reporters at the weekend.
But Fred Pawle, a Sydney-based surfing writer, warned that surfers, fishermen and divers were all reporting an increase in shark sightings off the coast of New South Wales.
'So it's not a sensible decision to remove nets. It's deliberately endangering lives in order to pander to Green voters, most of whom never go in the water,' he told Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
