Shark Patrols to start on South Coast

There have always been sharks out there and even though I am totally sh*t scared of the buggers, I don’t believe that is a valid reason to hunt them down or net them (and lets not get started on the pros and cons of nets). We used to watch for them in Bermaguie and you knew that if one of them was about, it was time to get out of the bloody water for a while. It’s not rocket science.

Maybe I read too much into Michael Moore’s docos but is the shark thing is just the latest in a long long line of fear campaigns that the media run to keep real issues out of the public’s mind?

Bugger me, I’m starting to believe it’s a conspiracy!

The ABC have this story on further south coast shark sightings and beach evacuations

Crazy….I actually didn’t see much other than sharks… the water was really murky from a storm the day before…a very strangley calming experience!!

That’s amazing Absent Diane as I did the same thing as you did in 2004 at Phi Phi, in an effort to rid myself of the same fear.

Saw a few smaller sharks and a whole lot of other marine life. I guess its a case of percentages and you’d have to be awfully unlucky (if an attack is unprovoked) to be looked upon as a shark’s next snack.

Don’t recall there eer being a fatal shark attack on the south coast… In any case, spotter planes are a good idea in that they don’t hurt marine life, people etc.

This is a typical knee jerk reaction under the circumstnaces – most of the shark fatalaties that come to mind in the last couple of years have been people doing the wrong thing such as swimming near drop-offs, dawn and dusk – the usual stuff they remind everyone about when this knd of thing happens.

The exception being the poor bugger in SA who was nailed on his wakeboard, that’s just bad luck. I’ve been trolling heaps of times and never had a bite at that speed – guess I was targeting the wrong species…

Lots of baitfish close in is a good thing; it shows that the fisheries are improving now that the purse seiners have stopped the mass slaughter of the seventies and eighties. With them comes the sharks – it is after all their environ, not ours.

Just be careful where you go swimmnig and keep an eye on the tides and time. You’ve got a lot more chances of stepping on a ray or being nailed by a blue bottle.

and don’t eat flake
its just poor little wobegones that won’t hurt anyone

Sharks creep me out…. I tried to get rid of my fear by going snorkelling in shark infested waters off the the phi phi islands (pre tsunami) this was really fun and I wasn’t scared at all… they just swam by and didn’t pay much attention at all… massive buggers… the funny thing is thinking back on it I am even more fearful now than then… so much for the theory on facing your fears…

some other handy facts

the road toll over Xmas was 78
there was 1 shark attack
(which one do you thinks needs more drastic action?)

shark netting destroys all large marine life not just sharks

in the last 25 years there have been 425 unprovoked shark attacks in Australia
and 938 provoked shark attacks

so stop bothering the sharks you idiots, just look at them and enjoy

as I was saying in the surf boat article

I saw the 3m bronze whaler off Burrewarra point (the lighthouse south of Guerllia Bay) on 28 Dec which is probably prompting these actions

I’d just got back in the dive boat when we saw it circling around, with 2 other groups of divers yet to get in the boat

it was big and curious, cirling the boat and both groups of divers in the water but didn’t come closer than around 10m or so

still I was glad I was in the boat and not sitting at the top of the water with it

What Garbage. At the moment there are more than enough pellagic fish cruising the bait fish for the sharks to eat. The only way a human will be attacked is if it is crook, or they didi something to piss it off such as stab at it.