Right: Great White sharks are warm-blooded animals that seem to prefer temperate waters. However, the species range widely around the world and white sharks have been seen in many semi-tropical areas, as well as in the cooler waters off the southern Australian coast. Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said. |
Further implications
Though there is no clear consensus as to what is occurring along the Western Australian coast that might account for the recent 'unprecedented' number of fatal shark attacks, they appear to be at least in part the consequence of altered human behaviour; that is, increasing numbers of people are using these beaches and coastal waters.
Conservationists argue that with Great White shark numbers being problematic and the death of even small numbers of these sharks potentially able to have a significant impact on the species' survival, culling is an unacceptable 'solution' to the problem.
Shaun Collin, a Western Australian Premiers Research fellow from the School of Animal Biology and University of Western Australia's Oceans Institute in Perth.
Collin has stated, 'The culling of any species of sharks is not the solution. Not only will this be indiscriminate killing of a protected Australian species (under both the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and state legislation), there is no way of being sure the sharks caught will be those responsible for the attacks.'
It has equally been argued that non-lethal means of protecting beaches are unlikely to secure them for the safe use of beach goers. Western Australia has an enormous coastline facing the Indian and Southern Oceans. Experts have acknowledged that nets are impracticable, while for aerial spotting to be effective over such an expanse is likely to prove prohibitively expensive.
The general level of conservation-awareness is such that any culling program which seeks to hunt Great White sharks to the point of extinction is unlikely to be acceptable to many Australians, or to the world community at large. Internationally Australia is already looked on with disfavour for its commercial culling of kangaroos, while there is seen to be a degree of hypocrisy in Australian opposition to Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean.
Western Australian premier, Colin Barnett, appears to be treading a very fine line when he suggests that fishing for sharks might be acceptable where culling is not.
The premier has stated, 'I am not advocating culling at all but I think there may be some scope, depending on the results of research, to allow increased fishing of shark, which used to happen and has been restricted for various reasons.' Barnett's tentative proposal looks very like culling under another name.
The difficulty facing Western Australia is that of just how much risk it is prepared to accept in the name of the conservation of a species. While conservationists argue that swimmers need to recognise they are intruding into the realm of the Great White shark and that there will always be a degree of danger in so doing, the state's economic self-interest argues that safe use of its coastal waters is an important commodity. It currently does not seem possible genuinely to reconcile these two points of view.