Transcript
Rachel: So, while the programme is called a shark control programme, they actually trap a huge variety of animals, and most will never pose any sort of risk to humans, and we catch more of those in our programmes than we do the target sharks.
Brian: Hello, and welcome to RSPCA Australia's Great and Small Talk, where we discuss the pressing welfare issues animals face in Australia. I'm Brian Daly, and today we're focusing on a species that is enormously important to our marine ecosystems, but generates such fear and receives an incredible amount of bad press, and that's sharks, and help address some of the misconceptions around sharks and shark welfare, and the methods used to control sharks in Australia. We're joined by Rachel Woodrow, principal advisor of animal welfare policy at RSPCA Queensland, and Andre Borell, founder of the Envoy Foundation and director of the film Envoy: Shark Cull. Rachel and Andre, welcome to the podcast.
Andre: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Rachel: Thanks for having us, Brian.
Brian: Now, with recent media attention on a number of shark incidents, the debate regarding the use of shark nets and other shark control methods has become a significant topic of interest. For listeners that aren't familiar, Andre, what are shark nets and drum lines, and how do they actually work?
Andre: Yeah, look, this is this is an important one, because I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding around these devices in the community. So, at their very core, they are fishing devices, it's that simple. A shark net is nothing more and nothing less than a fishing net, a set net, so that one, obviously not one that's dragged behind a boat, a set net that is anchored in location and stays there to catch and entangle and kill things. A drum line is a fancy word, I believe it comes from the fact that they used to have oil drums on as their surface marker buoy. A drum line is a fancy word for a big shark fishing hook anchored to the bottom, a float on the top, and then a hook, a hook that is baited and hanging there in the ocean. Now, these are deployed all up and down the Queensland coast. Shark nets are also deployed in New South Wales. We can go into smart drum lines later. I don't want to confuse things with that now. They're a different type of drum line, but yeah, basically all of the Queensland coast is blanketed in shark nets and drum lines, and there's also 51 shark nets in New South Wales, and they're there to catch and kill animals.
Brian: And there's a different approach to between the two states. Is there the differences in how they're deployed?
Andre: Yeah, so shark nets, there's very subtle differences, so Queensland, they are top set, meaning they're set at the surface of the ocean. They're only about six metres deep, set in twelve metres of water, so they have a gap at the bottom. Whereas the New South Wales are the inverse, they're bottom set, and they have a gap at the surface of the ocean. In both states, they're quite small, so we're talking 150 to 180 metres long, and they are set at beaches, often a kilometre, many kilometres long, so you've got this tiny, tiny net that's there to quote unquote protect the beach, but it's not very effective at that, as I'm sure we will get into.
Brian: Yeah, and what species are most commonly caught in these methods, Rachel?
Rachel: The species that are generally caught are actually non-target species, but if we're talking about the sharks that are specifically caught, the highest number that would be caught would be tiger sharks, and that would - I'm speaking predominantly for Queensland, but I do believe that's the same in New South Wales, bull sharks, so those are probably the top two shark species that are caught, but we also do see a number of other shark species caught as well. It's probably important to note that there are some differences between the two programmes with New South Wales and Queensland. Queensland actually have a list of seven target species of shark, whereas New South Wales focus more on three species, which are the tiger sharks, bull sharks, and white sharks? Queensland has a more broader list of sharks, and that may be because of our kind of sub-tropical temperatures, where we have different species of sharks that are potentially considered to be more potential risk to beach users. But sadly, you know, these are really indiscriminate control measures, so whilst it's called a shark control programme, as we, as we said, they do catch a number of other species, but one of the shark species that they do catch is the grey nurse shark, which is a critically endangered species here on the East Coast of Australia, and it's, it's really quite sad, because it's an iconic species, and like many sharks, it's really important for regulating other marine animal populations and ensuring that healthy and balanced ecosystem. It's also a really docile shark. Andre has probably dived with them before. They're often called the Labrador of the sea because they're not considered to be a threat to people, but the population is at. A critical level, it's such a tragedy when we, we hear that a grey nurse shark has been caught in the shark control equipment, it's a real loss, and so, yes, as much as the larger numbers of sharks are the tiger sharks and the bull sharks, those are also, you know, consequences of this type of control equipment.
Brian: I remember when the laws were changed in New South Wales to exclude fishing around grey nurse breeding areas, and that was going back years now, it seems like this is a very dangerous thing to happen to a ... to protected species like this. And is there any scientific evidence that shark nets actually even reduce shark incidents at the beaches?
Rachel: Look, the short answer to that is no, and there's a few reasons for that. First, as Andre mentioned earlier, shark nets were never designed to be a protective barrier. They don't enclose a beach or stop sharks from getting close to people, so sharks and other marine animals can swim around them, and they can swim under them, and they work by entangling animals that swim into them, so while the catch data certainly shows that nets and drum lines are effective at catching, and obviously then subsequently removing those target sharks, it doesn't prove that doing so actually reduces the risk of shark incidents, and I will note that that fact has been pointed out, you know, in a number of different publications. There was one recently, a KPMG evaluation of the Queensland Shark Control Programme, which happened in 2024 and they actually made specific comment on the limitations in measuring the effectiveness of the programme to improve human safety, because predicting when or even if a shark will interact with a water user is virtually impossible until it actually happens. Secondly, it's noted that there are, in that same particular report, there's been a number of shark incidents - serious incidents - occurring at beaches where shark control equipment was deployed at the time of the incident, which sadly has included fatalities, which is obviously quite shocking. And there are also a number of other publications which speak to this. An important one also of relevance is the 2017 Federal Senate inquiry into shark mitigation and deterrent measures, which concluded that lethal methods are not proven to improve public safety, and that these new and emerging technologies have been shown to provide more effective protection without causing negative environmental impacts.
Brian: The sound of shark nets, people would have the misconception that it's a physical barrier between the sharks and the swimmers, but this obviously isn't the case.
Andre: Yeah, it's a really dangerous misunderstanding, to be honest. When you hear shark net, most people, you picture some sort of enclosure that runs the full length of the beach, and then it returns to shore, it returns to headland, and it creates some sort of enclosure, and sharks out there, people in here, everyone's happy, everyone's safe. That's just not at all what they are. Devices like that do exist. So, I just visited Western Australia last week. They do have shark enclosures, or shark barriers, is the more correct terminology for that. They do have them, and they're fantastic. They're really, really good. They don't entangle anything, they don't kill anything, they don't harm anything. If anything, they become like a little micro biome, whether you've got things growing on the barrier, and you create this little artificial reef, almost. That's a shark barrier, or a shark enclosure. A shark net, they do not keep sharks away from people. We recently did an RTI request, so a Freedom of Information request in Queensland. We obtained all the GPS coordinates of all the shark sightings that have happened from the shark spotting drones. When you go plot them, it's amazing to see, like when you do plot all the shark sightings, and then you plot the nets and drum lines against those sightings, they're all inside the nets. All the shark sightings are literally on the beach side, on the swimmer side, on the inside, if you like, of these devices that are allegedly there to, you know, protect us from sharks, so it's a dangerous misconception. I think they're largely there for placebo. They're largely there to make people feel better. So, I think there's maybe not such an active drive from government to correct that misunderstanding, but it's a dangerous misunderstanding in my perception. You act differently if you think sharks can't get to near where you are. If this beach is totally enclosed or this beach is totally protected, you make different decisions. You act differently, and I just think that's dangerous. I think everyone, collectively, media, government, us, really need to get the word out there that they're not any sort of exclusion device, they're just a fishing device, that's it.
Brian: You're right. And even in your, your film Envoy: Shark Cull, I think Tom Carroll said he'd been surfing all his life, never really thought deeply on what these methods were and how they were affecting it, and switching to drum lines, then, because they also sound reasonably innocuous as a drum line. The word itself, but they're quite harsh devices, and are they even effective at reducing the presence of large sharks near beaches?
Andre: As someone who spent a lot of time in the water around sharks, and I know how they behave, and I know how they don't behave, and I know what gets them interested and what doesn't get them interested, what doesn't interest them is people generally. If you're diving with them, you're bubbly and noisy, and you're annoying, and they want nothing to do with you. What does get them interested is food, and they can, they can smell from an incredible distance. When they smell foods around, that will make them inquisitive. A drum line is a baited shark fishing hook essentially deployed not too far off our beaches. So, I immediately question the wisdom of placing bait near beaches. I don't think that's the smartest idea. They're placed there with bait in the hopes that they will catch a shark that maybe possibly would have swam near swimmers. That's the concept. However, the bait is a concern for me. The second concern is once an animal is hooked that is even more attractive to a shark than just a piece of bait, so if you have an animal hooked, doesn't matter if it's a harmless shark or if it's a dolphin or what it is, once you have an animal hooked on a drum line that is obviously then stressed, thrashing, splashing, trying to get away, that is a huge shark attractant, and we're not just hypothesising this. Again, we have done Freedom of Information applications, we've done RTI requests, where we have obtained hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of images of animals with massive bite marks out of them. So this isn't just a theory, like this actually happens. So, yeah, drum lines are there, they sound fairly innocuous, really. They're a shark fishing hook with bait, they're there to catch and kill target sharks, but unfortunately they catch and kill a lot of things, and while that animal is either dying and thrashing, it's a shark attractant, and then even when it has died, because these are just checked relatively infrequently, only about every 48 hours, but possibly more, even when the animal has died, you've now got a decaying animal there, which still is a shark attractant.
Brian: You mentioned before that there are alternative methods out there, surveillance and drone patrols, I think you said, are they more effective?
Andre: So, there was a drone trial that occurred in Queensland from 2020 to 2024 that already been in New South Wales prior to this, so four year trial to make sure that they're suitable for Queensland conditions, and basically they spotted way more sharks than nets and drum lines caught at the very same beaches across the very same time period, so you can already say that as a beach safety tool they are far more valuable than a net or a drum line, because you've got actual eyes in the sky, you know, the drone, the remote control in the hands of qualified pilots with the ability to spot a shark, and then make a beach safety decision informed on that. So, what species of shark is it? Is it close to swimmers? Is it far away? Is it swimming away? Is it swimming towards them? It's just a far better beach safety tool. So, drones are a fantastic example, and we can maybe come back to some of the other examples, but I think the drone versus nets and drum lines trial, and the data really showed that as a beach safety tool, drones are the way forward. As a shark fishing programme, nets and drum lines are the way forward. So we need to decide, what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to catch and kill as many sharks as possible? And the KPMG report that Rachel mentioned is very transparent. Well, you have to go digging for it, but it's very clear. We don't know if this makes beaches safer or not. The best we can do is use shark catch as a proxy for safety outcomes. Now that's not correct, that there's no science to support that dead sharks equal safety outcomes. So, yeah, it's a really ... I feel that these programmes are at a bit of a crossroads where we have all these promising technologies coming, or here I should say, they're already providing better beach safety outcomes, but they don't provide shark fishing outcomes, so it's a decision now. It's a crossroads. What are we actually trying to achieve here?
Brian: I would hope that we're trying to make beaches safe and not just kill wildlife. So perhaps that would be the point of the programmes that we're trying to change here.
Andre: One would hope.
Brian: Yeah, one would hope.
Andre: But catching and killing a bunch of sharks does play well politically in some, you know, some areas and in some media outlets. Unfortunately, so yeah ...
Brian: And as you've mentioned, Rachel, before, it's not only the sharks that are getting caught and killed here, it's the non-target species. So, what are those non-target species that commonly caught in shark nets and drum lines?
Rachel: Yeah. Well, yeah, as we've already talked about these programmes, this equipment, it catches an awful lot of different marine species that were never meant to be targeted, and they include some of the most vulnerable species in our oceans. The one that we see the most, which is the one that you'll see on the news regularly, is the humpback whales, which. Include sadly both mothers and calves, and occasionally I did see some data that ... that showed a few years ago we actually saw a minke whale caught here in Queensland, and this does occur primarily during the breeding season, and these are there are a couple of differences between New South Wales and Queensland, because New South Wales actually remove the nets during the winter migration season, so there is a highway called the Humpback Highway, where the humpback whales are moving from south to north for breeding purposes, and then they're returning back down along the highway, and they actually travel quite closely to the shoreline, so, and as Andre mentioned, these nets are not that far out, so they're constantly at risk of coming into contact with a net. Here in Queensland, we don't remove those nets during breeding season, which obviously increases the risks that we're going to see entanglements, and sadly, just last year I think we saw 13 entanglements here in Queensland compared to two in New South Wales, so they obviously make the headlines, because you know they're a majestic species, and people have a huge amount of concern when they see an animal like that struggling and in a lot of stress. Now, those animals will typically obviously get a lot of attention, and they will straight away have, you know, a rescue crew out there where possible, trying to release them, so they get quite a lot of, you know, attention, and what I think we have to recognise that whilst those bigger species that do get that attention, there are a whole lot of other animals that get entangled that will never make the headlines, and those are species again vulnerable, endangered, some critically endangered, including turtles, so we see loggerhead and leatherback turtles caught quite a bit, a whole range of dolphins, and occasionally you might see those in media, but that would include bottlenose and common dolphins, and a range of other species, dugongs, manta rays, and sawfish. Obviously, we also see, as we mentioned earlier, the non-target shark species as well, so a number of different species, and as we talked about the grey nurse shark, but we also see the spear tooth sharks, reef sharks, and a number of black tip species. So, while the programme is called a shark control programme, they actually trap a huge variety of animals, and most will never pose any sort of risk to humans. These are animals that are just existing in their environment and are unlucky enough to come across either a drum line or a net. So, yeah, a number of species, and unfortunately, they are the larger amount of animals that are caught. They're called bycatch or non-target species, and we catch more of those in our programmes than we do the target sharks.
Brian: And you mentioned that you know when a whale grabs the media attention, the rescues happen straight away, but what happens to all the other animals that don't grab the headlines?
Rachel: Yeah, and look, I guess that will come down to how long the animal is trapped, and as Andre mentioned earlier, the servicing of this equipment is a big piece of this, because if an animal is trapped and it's not seen for a couple of days, you can be pretty sure it will have passed away by the time somebody gets to that net or that drum line. So, if they can be freed quickly and safely, and their injuries aren't too significant, they may be lucky enough to survive that ordeal, but unfortunately, most animals caught in the nets and drum lines won't survive. Shark nets are basically fishing nets suspended in water, so when the animal gets entangled, as you can, if you can imagine it, just a net in the water, once it's entangled, it can't free itself, and for air-breathing marine animals, like your turtles, your dolphins, your whales, if they can't get to the surface, then they're obviously going to drown. Sadly, your other animals, like your rays and the sawfish, so the sawfish obviously has a snout that can very easily get caught in the mesh, and that pretty much makes escape impossible, as well as smaller sharks, where they become, I'll call it gills, where they're the net, the netting gets caught behind their gills, and they can't exit out of it, or they get wrapped, as Andre mentioned, they're thrashing around, they're very stressed, and they start to get themselves wrapped up in the net, and that's exactly how they're designed to work, so that they do entangle those animals, so obviously we've talked about the fact that they can be predated on, which is another impact of hooked animals, but yeah, I guess the curiosity that comes with a baited hook, as well, you know, is attracting different animals that may not necessarily otherwise be in the area, they might be, you know, coming toward that, just to investigate, and then then find themselves obviously being impacted. So sadly, if they're not found and released quickly, they can obviously suffer and and die.
Brian: So, how do animal welfare standards apply in these marine mitigation programmes?
Rachel: Yeah. Well, I think the first thing to recognise is that we are dealing with sentient beings here, so that means that they have that capacity to feel pain and to experience suffering, and that's just the first thing that we should always be cognizant of. We have to recognise that the way marine animals move through the water movement can really, you know, impact their ability to survive, and depending on which, which species you're talking about, they can have a, you know, a really stressful anxiety-filled experience by being caught in the net. So, there's that panic, the thrashing around, they're burning through energy, trying to escape, and there's just a whole lot of effort that has to go into them trying to free themselves, which can be life-threatening on its own, but the standards that apply, sadly, and again, each state and territory in Australia regulates animal welfare within the provisions of their own state-based animal welfare legislation and regulations, so they do differ, but primarily they're much the same.
If we talk about the two big states of New South Wales and Queensland, in Queensland, the Animal Care and Protection Act, which is obviously designed for protecting animals from neglect and cruelty, it does have a special exemption that applies when shark nets and drum lines are used for public safety, and this means that I guess if contract contractors are using fishing gear that is listed under the Fisheries Act to protect people from shark attacks or shark bites, and they're doing it under a formal agreement with the state, then actions that would normally be offences under animal welfare law, they wouldn't be offences in that context, so that includes sadly causing harm, which entanglement does, and death of those species. So, because the programme is legally framed as a public safety measure, that puts it outside of the normal safeguards of other animal-related activities. And look, that's a very similar case in New South Wales as well, where they have some other ... their legislation doesn't have an exemption per se, but it does allow some other general defences when the practice is in accordance with another piece of legislation, such as the Fisheries Act. So, but all of that being said, we would expect that the programmes are guided by government policy, and that contractors that are involved in servicing the equipment and releasing entangled animals would be required to follow standard operating procedures, which would focus on minimising negative impact and include some sort of protocols around safe rescue of non-target species, and also protocols for reducing the pain and suffering of target sharks that are subject to lethal control under the programme.
Brian: So, you're talking about lethal control of the target species, so if a target species gets trapped and somebody gets there early, they're still euthanised, is that correct? Still killed?
Rachel: Yes. A target shark, so that's that. Those list of the different species we talked about earlier. If they're a target species, they're subject to lethal control. So that is in Queensland, we do have the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which has some slightly different rules, and those sharks are not subject to lethal control, but the rest, if they are a tiger shark, would be, yeah.
Brian: So they're not tagged and released and monitored or anything?
Andre: Outside of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, if a tiger shark is caught, it will be killed. Inside the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, it will be tagged and released. I will make the very clear point here, though, that that is not that is not being voluntarily done by the government, putting their hands up and said, let's, let's look after our Great Barrier Reef Marine Park a bit more. Let's let's tag and release instead of kill sharks here. No, that was a hard-fought win. So the new government that's currently in power in Queensland has been very adamant that that will not extend outside anywhere that it's not legally mandated, and it's only legally mandated within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
An example of that, we're talking, Brian, you brought up earlier about grey nurse aggregation sites. Another one of those is in the Great Sandy Marine Park, there is a dive site there, or aggregation site there, called Wolf Rock. Heaps of grey nurse there. It's actually a hot spot. The nets and drum lines near that area are a hot spot for catching and killing grey nurse sharks. That is a state marine park. And under the previous government, there was a condition in that permit that by the end of last year, so 2025, we must transition to catch and release programme, much like the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The new government has come in now, that's been quietly scrubbed out. That condition doesn't exist anymore. We're not going to do tagging and releasing in the Great Sandy Marine Park anymore, which, because its proximity to Wolf Rock, is particularly high grey nurse shark catch zone quietly scrubbed out, which is really disappointing. To me, it's such a better outcome. The tagging and releasing happens through a device called a smart drum line. So, the drum lines we said before, they're just a hook in the water, they're checked every 48 to 72 hours, most things are dead on arrival. A smart drum line is different. It a smart drum line sends an alert as soon as something's hooked, so when there's a pull on the hook that essentially triggers an alert. Someone will come out within a reasonable amount of time, usually one hour or a few hours, and they can tag and release that shark.
Smart drum lines are, I guess, the lesser of two evils. You're still hooking an animal, you still have bait near beaches, which isn't fantastic, but there is a reasonable response time, animals are tagged and released. That is to me, if you're going to have to have drum lines, and I'm not saying you do, but if you're going to have to have drum lines, that's a far better approach, because we can learn a lot from these tagged animals. We can have safety outcomes from these tagged animals. So, New South Wales, for example, is big on the tag and release programme. They have a lot of smart drum lines, and a lot of beaches have a listening station. A listening station gets pinged when a tag shark swings past. That alert goes to lifeguards. That app goes to an app in New South Wales that you can have if you're on your watch, if you're out for a surf, or your phone if you're on the beach. So, plus the research opportunities, we're understanding much more now. How these sharks move, how migratory are they? Where are they at? What time of year do they have preferences in terms of what habitats they like to spend time in? So, tagging, releasing, if you have to have a drum line, right? Let's just say you can't run a programme without a drum line. I disagree, but let's just say that for a moment, then to me it is insane that you would kill a shark rather than tag and release it, and all the benefits that come out of that.
Obviously, you're also not taking out a key apex predator, you're not causing the ecosystem ripple effects from that, so you're letting that animal live, you're letting its perform its function in the ecosystem as well as obviously it's just its right to exist, but you're still having safety outcomes, and you're still having research outcomes as well. So, yeah, tagging and releasing is the best, huh? If you are going to catch sharks, then tag and releasing is obviously the better approach. New South Wales are actually quite good with it. I have to tip my cap to them. Queensland, different story.
Brian: And coming back to the whole point of this is to keep swimmers safe. There's a huge fear, as we know, in the population around sharks and shark attacks, and it's the big sensationalised thing. And fair enough, they would be terrible things to experience, no doubt at all. But how common are shark bites in Australia relative to the ocean use that we have here? I mean, we have millions of people going into the water every year. I mean, how common are they here?
Andre: Yeah, so I mean, the simplest way to explain it is, you're much more likely to be injured or suffer a fatality on the road driving to the beach than you are to have a shark attack at the beach or shark bite incident at a beach, the odds are very, very low. Now, there are oversimplifications of this, in terms of it's, you know, you got a higher chances of being killed by a bee, for example, or whatever. All that is correct, and the point of all those examples is to explain that is a minuscule risk. We have millions of people enter the water every day. We have a few shark bite incidents per year.
However, I think some of those oversimplifications, sometimes, which are important from an illustrative context, but they oversimplify things. The fear of shark bite and the risk of shark bite is different for someone who lives in the city and goes to the beach twice a year than it is for someone who's in a small coastal town. They live and breathe the ocean, they surf every morning, whatever it might be, that risk is obviously going to be different, and it's going to be obviously higher for the second person than the first. A lot of coastal surfing communities, this is a very real fear for them, like if it hasn't happened to them or a friend, then it's happened to a friend of a friend, or someone who's a few degrees separated, so I think the risk is minuscule. I think we all understand that, however, facts and reality and statistics and math don't always transition to how people feel and how community feel in incidents, so they are very real for some people, especially smaller coastal communities. They have lingering effects in the community, like it's not like the bite happens, it's on the news for a day or two, and then it passes for the rest of us. In some of these communities, it is, it is very real. So, we have to acknowledge that that is the reality.
However, we also need to acknowledge that going and killing a bunch of sharks is not going to fix it. We've been doing it since 1937 in New South Wales, we've been doing it since 1962 in Queensland. If it was the answer, and if it was going to work, should it not have worked by now? You know, nearly 90 years in New South Wales, over 60 years in Queensland. If going and killing a bunch of sharks is the answer, why do we still have this issue? So, I think acknowledging that the risk is small, acknowledging that if we're being very, very, very cold and clinical about it, acknowledging that the amount of government resources put towards this is disproportionate to the actual risk, acknowledging all of that, we also need to understand that if we really want to make a difference and we really want to actually reduce these incidents, that is possible, but it's not possible by doing what we've done since 1937 or 1962 in Queensland. It's possible by moving with the times and moving with the technology and moving with all our improved understanding and all these great benefits that technology give us. So the risk is incredibly small, however, it does have very real impacts on obviously the bite victim themselves, friends, family, communities. We can mitigate that risk without killing a bunch of sharks. We can mitigate that risk by coexisting, but we cannot mitigate that risk by doing what we've done for 90 years hasn't worked for 90 years, and we're just, I guess, I don't know, hoping that it's going to start working in year number 91.
Brian: Yeah, and I mean, I grew up on the south coast of New South Wales, surfing on an un-netted beach, and you just accepted that, you know, there was that small risk every time you went out, and it's that's part of the deal of going in and catching a few waves to me. But obviously, you know, there were ways and times of the day that you would go or not go, or, or you know, if there was a, it was a big school of fish, or a flush out from the lagoon, or anything like that, you'd sort of take location guides, I guess, of when perhaps to stay out for the day, or something like that. But what are the most effective ways for people to reduce their personal shark risk these days?
Andre: Yeah, look, there's a bunch, there's a bunch, and you've just mentioned some of the key ones. So, if there's outflows from a river or a creek or a harbour after heavy rains or something, you don't want to be in that water. Trust me, I'm someone who's spent a lot of time in the water with sharks in various degrees of visibility from crystal clear waters in the Maldives to not so clear water in other situations. You want sharks to have vision on their side. You don't want to be around a shark whose only way of sensing something is electroreception or bumping and biting. That's not a shark you want to be around. You want to be around a shark with the benefit of vision. It can know you're a weird thing that it doesn't really know what you are, and it wants to stay away from, so that is a fantastic one.
Dawn and dusk is also a common one, so that's not necessarily around the presence of sharks. Sharks are present at the beach, at the ocean, more or less, like there's a new study out that tiger sharks are more present at night, not so much during the day. This is a generalisation, but it's the ocean, there's sharks around. The dawn and dusk, one is more around that, that's prime hunting time for them, you know? You don't want to be around a shark, and it's prime hunting time if you can avoid it. I would rather be around it during the day when it's fat and happy and swimming around chill, you know? And I could go on and on and on with these, but where the point I think is more important to make is why are we not having these conversations in schools? You know? Why are we, why are we not just as aware of what's a sharky time and what's a risky time as we are aware of rips, or as we're aware of what red and yellow flags mean. So, I think, and I think that comes from the fact that no one really wants to talk about sharks. Sucks, like it's a scary thing. We'll kind of just put our head in the sand on it a little bit, but we've, we've got a fantastic resource coming out soon called Think Like a Shark that covers all those examples. It's basically like a comic book style, sort of meant for all ages, but comic book style that illustrates all the different scenarios that you don't want to put yourself in, and also explains why, because I think there's a decent amount of knowledge out there about, you know, don't go at dawn and dusk, don't be near fishermen, don't do this, don't do that, but doesn't really explain why some are self-explanatory, so it's fine, others not, so yeah, we've got this resource coming out that I think we're trying to kind of fill a vacuum, like I think that information should exist better from someone else, but it doesn't, so we've gone and put it together. Think Like a Shark. It's about 28 pages, I think 24 different scenarios of situations that you know can lead to higher risk, and how you can manage that situation.
The other one you mentioned is don't be around bait balls, you know, if there's a bunch of fish in the water that might be shark hunting time. Don't be around that. It's not always easy to see if there's a bunch of fish in the water. So, sometimes a clue can be birds dive bombing. There's birds dive bombing in a single area, you can be pretty sure there's a large amount of fish. Well, you can see the birds. What you can't see is under the ocean, and there's probably dolphins and or sharks hunting on that bait ball as well. Another one is, people think dolphins means no sharks. That's not true. They will happily coexist with each other in a feeding opportunity, such as a bait ball. Where the myth came from was generally sharks will avoid dolphins. Generally speaking, because dolphins are kind of, yeah ... I'm more sketched out in the water around dolphins than I am around sharks. Put it that way, they're a lot more confident. So, sharks don't really mess with that. They're like, I don't want anything to do with you, I'll stay away from you. That's where the myth came from, that if you see dolphins, you find there's no sharks. While some situations that can be correct, in some other situations they'll happily coexist, especially if there's a feed involved. So, that's some of the examples.
Brian: And Rachel, do you have anything ... any other resources or tips for beach goers to make informed decisions?
Rachel: Yeah, I think obviously that that resource will be an excellent one, and yeah, I certainly will be checking it out, because I've recently started some stand-up paddle boarding, and you know, the beach that I go to has a really clear sign around the, you know, the fact that sharks have been sighted at this beach, it's not a protected beach, and I know that I have to make that decision around whether or not I'm going to, you know, to go into their habitat, into their environment, where I'm ... I'm putting myself potentially at risk, and that's as Andre said, it's, it's ... I think it's not about kind of putting your safety in somebody else's hands, we all need to take responsibility for ourselves and the decisions we make in these sorts of circumstances, whether it's in the ocean or whether it's going out for a hike in the, in the forest, where you might come across, you know, snakes and spiders and other animals. How we choose to, you know, make those decisions to keep ourselves safe is up to us, and we do need to take responsibility for educating ourselves around these things, so I think this is an amazing resource, and I look forward to getting familiar with it.
Brian: Well, thank you, both of you, for joining us today. It's been, it's been great talking to you both, Rachel and Andre, addressing this incredibly important wildlife issue, and the misconceptions around not only sharks themselves, but the harmful and lethal methods that are currently used here in our very own waters to attempt to control them, so hopefully people will see these magnificent creatures, as you say, a little differently now, and that they are deserving of our respect, our protection, and hopefully the mitigation methods that are currently threatening them and other marine species are phased out as soon as possible. So, thanks again for your time today.
Rachel: Thanks so much, Brian.
Andre: Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Rachel.
Brian: We've been talking today with Rachel Woodrow, principal advisor of animal welfare policy at RSPCA Queensland, and Andre Borell, founder of the Envoy Foundation, and thank you for listening. If you would like any more information on shark welfare and issues around shark nets and drum lines, you can look at the Think Like a Shark resources coming out soon, or you could visit the RSPCA Australia's website at rspca.org.au or the RSPCA Knowledgebase at kb.rspca.org.au, or you can also catch Andre's film Envoy: Shark Cull, now streaming on Netflix, and a couple of other streamers, I believe, as well. And remember, you can also subscribe to our podcast series here at the RSPCA website, or all the usual podcast streaming platforms. I'm Brian Daly, and I look forward to your company next time on RSPCA Australia's Great and Small Talk.
