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Monday, August 18, 2025

The fear of sharks unfounded

by

20140209

In Trinidad a shark is killed and we line up for bake and shark. In Aus­tralia a shark is killed and more than 6,000 peo­ple protest.West­ern Aus­tralia's pre­mier, Col­in Bar­nett, hard­ly ex­pect­ed the out­rage. It was sup­posed to be a vote-win­ner, sooth­ing vot­ers' shark fears–the West­ern Aus­tralian shark cull. In­stead it prompt­ed out­rage and ridicule from en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists and sci­en­tists world­wide.

West­ern Aus­tralia has had sev­en fa­tal shark at­tacks in the last three years. The shark-cull ra­tio­nale: killing large sharks near beach­es will safe­guard swim­mers and surfers. The method: 72 bait­ed drum lines. A drum line is a float­ing bar­rel, an­chored to the sea floor, at­tached to a line with bait­ed shark hooks. Drum lines have been used since 1962. It is claimed they are ef­fec­tive in tar­get­ing the three sharks most dan­ger­ous to man: the bull shark, the tiger shark and the CITES-pro­tect­ed great white shark.

There has been much crit­i­cism of the shark cull. It is un­sci­en­tif­ic and un­proven. It caus­es Aus­tralia to kill CITES-pro­tect­ed sharks like the Great White, which Aus­tralia is bound by in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tion to pro­tect. It has dam­aged Aus­tralia's in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ing as a coun­try which pro­tects its en­vi­ron­ment. Some divers and tourists have al­ready an­nounced they will not vis­it Aus­tralia as long as the shark cull con­tin­ues.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers


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