Word: sharking
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...Hislop and others maintain that sharks develop a taste for people and can be repeat offenders. Says Hugh Edwards, a Western Australian author and fisherman who has been filming documentaries on sharks for more than 20 years: "I tend to agree that individual sharks can be responsible for more than one attack." Edwards suggests that they should be killed, "as long as you know that it's definitely the right shark...
...scientists reject such arguments as ill-informed. "There is no evidence that sharks become repeat attackers," says McAuley, who heads a shark and ray sustainability program for the fisheries department. "We have had a number of years between fatal shark attacks in West Australia, which is the clearest indication that sharks don't learn to predate humans...
...McAuley acknowledges that the number of attacks may have increased lately. But he maintains this is not because shark numbers have increased dramatically due to successful preservation programs, as some have argued. White pointer sharks, for example, take 20 years to reach maturity, do not give birth every year, and have few offspring. "Any increase would take in the order of decades," McAuley says...
...Australian officials have taken what steps they can to minimize man-shark encounters. Queensland and New South Wales have strung nets off popular surfing beaches to keep sharks out. The Queensland government says there has not been a fatal attack on a netted beach since they were introduced in the 1960s, but critics say the nets kill turtles, dolphins and sometimes whales. In Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, authorities rely on aerial spotters and lifeguards who alert swimmers when a suspicious shape appears in the surf...
...attitude of many is: swim at your own risk - and leave the sharks alone. As Guest reportedly wrote on an anglers' website before he died: "[Sharks] got a right to be there, we've got a right to go there and there are risks associated with everything, but I don't believe the correct way of reducing our risk is to kill the shark." Luckily for the sharks, most Australians seem to think the same...