Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Now, take a listen to this.
Just read the latest news about a woman fighting for her life after a shark attack at Goodger Beach.
Chapter 2: What sparked the debate over shark culling in Sydney?
It's so wrong that we don't cull sharks after attacks. It's so wrong that we don't have a commercial shark fishery, given the explosion in shark numbers. And it's so wrong that we don't put people before sharks.
That was former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott there. He uploaded that video in response to a vicious shark attack that happened at Coogee Beach in Sydney on Saturday morning. 35 year old teacher and mother Leah Stewart was pulled from the water with life changing injuries after being attacked.
by a great white shark Mr Abbott's call for a shark cull has been widely criticised but if a cull isn't the way to prevent shark attacks what is?
I'm joined by Professor Emeritus Rob Harcourt who leads the Marine Predator Research Group at Macquarie University Good morning Rob thanks a million for joining us No problem at all Before we get into the broader conversation that particular attack I mentioned at Coogee was really awful how unusual is that?
That is actually unusual. The poor lady, she was swimming close to shore in between the flags on a spectacularly beautiful winter's day. The water was clear and, yeah, she was just very, very, very unlucky.
Now, she suffered horrific injuries. She lost an arm, I think, and she's undergone multiple surgeries. And after something like that is a reaction, a protective reaction, a reaction like Tony Abbott there, it's kind of understandable, isn't it?
Well, it is and it isn't. I mean, Tony should know better. He was the Prime Minister at one stage. And unfortunately, you're right, it's a gut response. If something comes to harm someone, then we always want to feel like we sort of overreact because we feel like we haven't protected them in advance because, of course, we're not going to put her arm back by doing that.
And we're not going to help save other people in the future either, unfortunately.
OK, now I believe that shark attacks, shark bites are on the rise. I'm just looking at figures here. Between 1980 and 1999, there was an average of 0.6 shark bites causing injury each year recorded in New South Wales. The current rate, 4.16. So it's gone up a lot. Why is that? Are shark numbers rising?
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Chapter 3: Why is Tony Abbott's call for a shark cull controversial?
But what we find is that these animals, they swim very large distances. I mean, white sharks that have been tagged off New South Wales have been across to New Zealand and back several times. They go down to Tasmania, even across to Western Australia. And we've had white sharks come across to Australia from South Africa in the past.
And where they have tried major culling programs, what they've found is that they kill a lot of sharks but there's no change in the number of people that get bitten.
And so there's been a couple of very famous examples of this, one off Hawaii where tiger sharks are the major problem and they killed nearly 5,000 tiger sharks over the course of a number of years with no change in the number of people being bitten by tiger sharks. And similarly off Reunion Island, which was, famous for a series of attacks. So that's a French protector in the Indian Ocean.
Chapter 4: How unusual are shark attacks in Sydney?
Very, very popular surfing and diving in Ireland, particularly for French tourists. And where Kelly Slater famously said, we've got to remove all the sharks. Well, they were They've implemented a shark culling program to try and protect swimmers.
And, again, the abundance of sharks locally didn't change because when you kill a number of sharks in one area, then new ones come in and fill up the area because the food is still there. So you're not actually going to change the presence of sharks. You're just going to kill a whole bunch of animals, which will then be filled in by animals coming from elsewhere. Yeah.
Okay. And obviously sharks have their place in the ecosystem, the marine ecosystem. What happens if they are killed?
Well, this is the other thing that, and this sort of the complexity of food webs is something that really make people sort of step back a little bit and realize that things are much more complicated. Because if you take out large predators, you'd think, okay, well then there'll be less of them.
But what we find in a lot of food web modelling, and it's been enacted in real terms when fisheries have overfished, is that you often end up with an increase in the predators because you change
things like cannibalism and stuff so you know big sharks eat small sharks and if you take out the big sharks then the small sharks grow faster because there's more food and then and then they're still present so you don't necessarily change the number that are present that might bite people in fact often you'll change the demography and they'll be that you take a bit of pressure off and they're more likely to try novel food and humans of course are novel for the most part to these sharks as well okay so if a cull isn't the answer what are what is the answer
Well, we are in the ā so the culling is a 19th century approach and we know now because we know a lot more about marine food webs that it's probably not going to work. But we do have phenomenal ways of actually seeing what's going on.
And I don't know if it's well known in Ireland, but one of the things about the Coogee attack is that the poor woman was swimming at a beach which is right underneath the flight path for Sydney International Airport. And so there's a ban on drones flying over that area. So we've been putting drones over most patrol beaches for years.
The last five to 10 years, they've been very, very effective at spotting sharks. So they've now lifted that ban, I should say, in response to that bite at Coogee. And they'll probably put in place, you know, patrolling by surf lifesaving because they can see sharks coming into the bay. We have beautiful clear waters for the most part of Sydney.
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