On Tuesday, 20-year-old Sam Morgan was mauled on the coast off Ballina, and while he will likely escape serious injuries, the incident has again led to calls for more protections to be put in place. The New South Wales Government has already committed to install ‘eco barriers’ at Lighthouse Beach, where the attack occurred.
It is likely this will not be the last attack of this season. The question we have to ask is how we will deal with them.
Sharks have always been a factor in Australian life, but recent attacks have resulted in an increasing hysteria over the issue. This reaction began after the Western Australian Government’s shark cull in 2013, a policy that many continue to push for even after the Government’s own regulator recommended it not continue.
This response is best epitomised by an opinion piece by Laura Banks in the Daily Telegraph this August. Bank’s article set up sharks as our ‘enemy’; one which we must do whatever it takes to defeat. As she wrote:
“The ocean is our domain and sharks have no place destroying lives and livelihoods; these predators are lurking out there ready to cull humans and we as a community must find a permanent solution.”
A permanent solution — the culling of sharks to protect surfers and swimmers — seems to be gaining more favour in our community.
I have a lot of sympathy for people advocating for culls. I love swimming at the beach but sharks terrify me. In some ways I’ve often thought the beach would be nicer if the threat of them was gone.
Yet, when I look at this issue realistically I cannot help but think things have gotten a little over-the-top. While shark attacks are awful things, we’ve blown up this situation to a status it doesn’t deserve. In doing so we’ve created more threats to our local communities than sharks could ever provide.
Let’s just take a quick look at the data. Since 1791 there has only been 232 fatal shark attacks in Australia, with only two deaths occurring so far in 2015. This puts shark attacks well below many other forms of death in Australia, including obesity, smoking, traffic accidents, domestic violence and lighting strikes, amongst many others.
Each of these attacks is awful. At the same time though, they is a risk that comes with the territory. Just like lightning strikes are a risk if you go outside in a storm, or a car crash is the risk of driving every day, getting attacked by a shark is the risk you take when you go into the ocean.
As with any of those activities we should be doing as much as we can to reduce these risks. I’m in favour of helicopter patrols and of deterrent technologies when they prove not to have an impact on endangered species. But, as Alex McKinnon argues, “car crashes don’t make journalists call for cars to be banned. People dying in floods don’t trigger campaigns to ban rain.”
Yet somehow this is where the rhetoric is leading us when it comes to sharks. Instead of just minimising the danger we have moved to trying to get rid of it completely, seemingly by declaring war on an entire species. This isn’t just completely unrealistic, as the WA shark cull proved, but it is also potentially creating real harm to coastal communities. In her article, for example, Banks said that shark attacks were leading to the "desertion" of coastal towns. “We won’t have to worry about sharks because there will be no one living on the coast,” she wrote. “The shark will have won.”
I doubt this is even close to true, but if it is the case it seems unlikely that sharks are the real cause. Our coastal towns have flourished for over two centuries despite the risk sharks have played. What has changed has been our reaction — a desire to get rid of the risk of sharks, and a panic when that doesn’t happen. It is not sharks that are turning people away the coast. It is fear mongering over a tragedy that is extremely unlikely to occur.
We are unfortunately likely to see more shark attacks this summer. That is the risk we take when we head into the water.
Sharks are a natural and integral part of our ecosystem. They will always be a risk. It is our response that we can manage. Reducing the risk of shark attacks makes sense. Trying to eliminate it though is both impossible and impractical.
Simon Copland is a freelance writer and climate campaigner. He is a regular columnist for the Sydney Star Observer and blogs at The Moonbat.
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