As the weather heats up and Australians return to the beach. Many swimmers are still haunted by last summer’s shark attacks. In South Australia, there were six bites in justice over six months. Three of them were fatal and believed to come from great white sharks. This year marks 25 years since great white sharks became protected in Australian waters. But the recent spike in attacks has many questioning whether protecting the predators is costing human lives.
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00:00The beaches and breaks around the tiny town of Elliston are world class.
00:17The reason that we live out here so far away from everything is because of the surf.
00:24And along with the dolphins and seals the surfers know, they share the waves with something
00:30else.
00:31The huge white pointers are unpredictable, terrifying and ferocious monsters.
00:37Great white sharks have always drawn fascination and fear, hunted to the edge of extinction.
00:44In 1999, great whites were declared a protected species, but 2024, the 25th anniversary of
00:54our protection was a grim milestone in South Australia.
00:58Shark attack, a surfer still missing after a suspected encounter with a...
01:01Six attacks in eight months, three of them fatal, two were in the tiny community of Elliston.
01:09The first attack was when we lost Simon.
01:14Teacher Simon Baccanello had just moved to town.
01:18We were surfing with him when he was taken and that just rocked all of us.
01:24He was just so loved at the school, he was just stoked to be here.
01:30As the community grieved, the town experienced a second trauma.
01:34A 64-year-old man is recovering in hospital after the sixth shark attack in South Australian
01:40waters in little more than six months.
01:42Murray Adams taught alongside Simon at the local school and survived the bite.
01:48Now many are questioning whether protecting great whites is costing human lives.
01:53We started protecting him and then we just left it at that and sometimes I feel like
01:59we as surfers and ocean users are just left as cannon fodder.
02:06In the waters off the Neptune Islands around 200 kilometres south of Elliston, Flinders
02:11University ecologist Charlie Houveniers is trying to better understand great white numbers.
02:17He's collecting genetic samples for population modelling.
02:21But the range is actually quite broad, going from about 1,200 to a bit more than 3,000
02:26adult white sharks.
02:28Professor Houveniers says there's no scientific evidence that shark numbers have recovered
02:33and even if they had, it wouldn't explain the recent attacks.
02:37We don't know what happened in South Australia in that summer of 2023-2024.
02:43It was an unusual cluster of shark bites, but we're actually seeing this kind of cluster
02:48of bites regularly happening, not just in Australia but across the world.
02:55Houveniers says policies for population recovery need to be matched with appropriate mitigation,
03:02arguing that culling sharks is not an effective way to protect swimmers, compared to a range
03:07of new technologies like barriers, real-time warning systems, shark deterrents and drones.
03:14Dr Brianna Labusk agrees.
03:17She's an expert in how public perceptions affect conservation.
03:21In her research, one movie is mentioned a lot.
03:26We definitely think there is such a thing as the Jaws effect.
03:30Multiple studies have suggested the 50-year-old blockbuster is still influencing public opinion
03:36and also public policy.
03:38Some of the policies around the idea of culling sharks and sort of if a shark gets a taste
03:44for humans then they have to be killed because they're going to keep biting humans.
03:48There's no scientific evidence that sharks do that.
03:54In the shadow of newly installed trauma kits, the surfers of Elliston have returned to the
03:59ocean that has taken so much.
04:04It's so wild how much the ocean has been imperative to our recovery as well.
04:12Getting back into the water and just that is what getting back to normal life looks
04:16like for us too.
04:17A way of life worth saving.