Sharks | PUNT ROAD END | Richmond Tigers Forum
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Sharks

You literally posted the theory that sharks attacks account for a large number of drowning victims. Now you don't want to discuss it?
I posted the theory after a family claimed that the recent victim in SA wasn't killed by a shark. (The death is still at this stage officially ascribed to shark attack.) That doesn't mean I subscribe to it. Vic Hislop's views are extreme, but some of them give pause for thought. And as stated and reiterated, shark attack remains an outside possibility in the Altona incident, but a possibility nonetheless. A shark fatality in the Bay would be a game-changer.

Stop being a pest.
 
I posted the theory after a family claimed that the recent victim in SA wasn't killed by a shark. (The death is still at this stage officially ascribed to shark attack.) That doesn't mean I subscribe to it. Vic Hislop's views are extreme, but some of them give pause for thought. And as stated and reiterated, shark attack remains an outside possibility in the Altona incident, but a possibility nonetheless. A shark fatality in the Bay would be a game-changer.

Stop being a pest.

Sure, if you stop being a hypocrite.
 
The latest on the Altona death here.


The snorkeller was with 3 friends in the water - no report of them noticing a shark, or seeing a shark attack. As sharks usually come in for a bite first it seems unlikely that the victim made no struggle or didn't try to alert friends if a shark did have a go.

Another man drowned at Altona Beach on 6th Jan while abalone fishing with friends.
 
Another man drowned at Altona Beach on 6th Jan while abalone fishing with friends.
Wonder whether abalone was the purpose here?

Another man drowned at Williamstown on Jan 6 while diving for abalone, but both men were brought to shore where resuscitation was attempted. This woman has disappeared.
 
Wonder whether abalone was the purpose here?

Another man drowned at Williamstown on Jan 6 while diving for abalone, but both men were brought to shore where resuscitation was attempted. This woman has disappeared.

Abalone? Not sure, that was what the story reported. Do you have other info?

Shark attack victims are also often brought to shore as well. The fact that the woman's body has not yet been found doesn't say anything either way.
 
Abalone? Not sure, that was what the story reported. Do you have other info?

Shark attack victims are also often brought to shore as well. The fact that the woman's body has not yet been found doesn't say anything either way.
The found the body. Interestingly they did not report she had all her arms and legs. read into that what you will.
 
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All 8 deaths by drowning in Vic so far in 2021. All bodies recovered, no shark involvement.​

VICTORIA DROWNINGS 2021​

  • January 26: A 35-year-old man from St Kilda drowned after coming into difficulty while swimming near the northern Victorian town of Cobram, at the border with NSW. His body was found about four metres underwater by divers.
  • January 23: A man died after he was pulled from the water on Thirteenth beach in Barwon Heads. A boy and girl were assisted back to shore while the man was winched from the water by a helicopter.
  • January 23: The body of a 58-year-old man was found in the water off the coast of Anglesea. He had been out in a small boat with another man when the vessel overturned.
  • January 20: Terry Chandler, 42, died after he was thrown from a tinnie near Darriman, in Victoria’s east. The woman and teen he was with were able to make it to shore. Mr Chandler was found by the police air wing in waters off McLoughlins Beach, about 60 kilometres from Traralgon.
  • January 16: A four-year-old girl from Doveton died after she was pulled unconscious from Lysterfield Lake, near Narre Warren, on January 13. She was taken to hospital in a critical condition but died several days later.
  • January 13: Lisa Mandeltort, a teacher at Nossal High School in Berwick, died helping to rescue a 14-year-old girl at Venus Bay on the South Gippsland coast. She helped the teen and another man back to shore but ended up in distress and was pulled from the water.
  • January 13: A 45-year-old postal worker, Aida Hamed, died after being swept off rocks by a wave at Bushrangers Bay on the Mornington Peninsula. Two men jumped into the water to rescue Ms Hamed, her friend and two teenage girls after they were swept into the sea.
  • January 13: A man in his 80s, who has not been identified publicly, was pulled unconscious from Rye front beach and was unable to be saved.
 
Where's Lee?
Grey nurse aka raggedtooth aka sand tiger isn't a maneater. They had an undeserved bad rep up to the 80's and are endangered because of it. They're the nasty-looking sharks that are commonly photographed in aquariums with their teeth hanging out everywhere. But the teeth are built for eating fish.

 
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Why is no one in authority addressing our shark crisis? (paywalled)
Fred Pawle
The Australian
February 6, 2021

Traditional preparations for a trip up the Australian coast involved throwing towels, boards, bathers and sunscreen into the car and heading off.

But in these more enlightened times, it’s advisable to also download a shark-alert app to your phone and pack the sort of first-aid equipment that you’d normally only find in a military medic’s backpack.

A group of Australian and South African surfers last year formed a company that produces a kit containing latex gloves, tourniquets, a heat blanket and bandages. It costs $160 but might just save a life.

Their company is called Calm As, which ironically describes the way our politicians and researchers are addressing the shark crisis.

In the past year, there have been eight confirmed deaths by shark attack in Australia. But the actual figure is almost certainly nine, after a young father disappeared while snorkelling in South Australia this month. Other less serious attacks, close calls and sightings are impossible to quantify. Neither is the anguish endured by the thousands of parents of young surfers in the increasing number of shark hot spots along our otherwise glorious coastline.

This toll has done nothing to alarm Australia’s clique of shark researchers, whose concern for human life is matched or even exceeded by their concern for the welfare of sharks and other marine life.

Last month two of Australia’s leading shark researchers, Daryl Mcphee of Bond University and Victor Peddemors of the NSW Department of Primary Industries, published a report that confirmed it’s business as usual.

The report is catchily titled “A comparison of alternative systems to catch and kill for mitigating unprovoked shark bite on bathers or surfers at ocean beaches”, which in layman’s terms translates to “Seeking funds for research while ignoring proven ways to prevent people being killed by sharks”.

Australia already has one of the world’s most efficient, cheapest and effective methods of preventing shark attacks, or “shark bites”, as Mcphee and Peddemors prefer to call them.

The Queensland shark management program, which catches and kills sharks that stray into popular beaches, has been in operation since 1962. It currently costs about $3.5m a year. Queensland has recorded only two fatalities at a protected beach. The most recent was of a surfer at Snapper Rocks last year.

The program has not destroyed the state’s marine ecology. But it barely rates a mention in Mcphee and Peddemors’ report, other than to note it is “highly controversial”.

“There is a recognised need to use non-lethal methods including new technologies that provide for enhanced safety and peace-of-mind for beach users, while reducing or eliminating significant environmental impact,” they say.

This “recognised need” is based on three studies into community attitudes, the most recent of which was 2018, 10 fatalities ago. Their findings do not concur with the correspondence I have for years received from surfers and fishermen around the nation.

Surfers are being spooked by increasingly regular sightings and close encounters, and fishermen are losing a significant proportion of their catches to the dozens of sharks that have learned to follow their boats for an easy feed. (Yet conservationists and researchers continue to insist sharks are “apex predators”.)

Instead of lauding the Queensland program, Mcphee and Peddemors talk up expensive non-lethal alternatives.

One of these methods is electronic deterrents, which irritate the sensors in sharks’ snouts called the ampullae of Lorenzini. These devices “have been found to deter sharks (albeit not 100 per cent of the time),” they say.

Not 100 per cent? It’s a lot lower than that. The most recent study into the devices, published in December, found the best electrical device, called the Surf +, deterred great whites in only 60 per cent of approaches. Worse, the sharks “become acclimatised to the deterrent through habituation”, meaning their effectiveness decreases.

The West Australian government spent almost $1m on subsidies for these devices before this research was conducted. Meanwhile, Mcphee and Peddemors say research, costing far more than the already proven Queensland management program, is “ongoing”.

None of the recent research adequately explains the increase in attacks and sightings. A paper looking at population size of great whites off the east coast, published in December by the NSW DPI and University of Queensland, “agrees with previous studies that report stability of population size”.

Over the past five years, I’ve asked four successive federal environment ministers when Australia’s beach users might expect the protection of great whites, which has been in place since 1999, will be lifted.

The answer has always been the same. “The white shark is listed nationally as a threatened species under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 in the Vulnerable category,” Minister Sussan Ley’s spokesman told me in an email in November. “There has been no data brought forward to suggest the listing should be changed and there has been no application for it to be reassessed.”

Neither has there been data brought forward that adequately explains the alarming size and proliferation of these lethal animals at our beaches and offshore fishing areas.

Great Whites have been protected since 1999. Picture: Al McGlashan
Great Whites have been protected since 1999. Picture: Al McGlashan
 
Quite an odd article. He seems completely against the idea of technology that might protect beaches without killing sharks.

Lift the protection and kill ‘em all.

It’s their water; it’s a risk. Improving technology and understanding is the answer, not killing more.
 
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A group of Australian and South African surfers last year formed a company that produces a kit containing latex gloves, tourniquets, a heat blanket and bandages. It costs $160


Thats a hell of lot of bandages ...... Should get all these things for under $50... But gotta fund the lifestyle somehow.
 
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A group of Australian and South African surfers last year formed a company that produces a kit containing latex gloves, tourniquets, a heat blanket and bandages. It costs $160

Just goes to show that there is a lot of different type of sharks out there.
 
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A group of Australian and South African surfers last year formed a company that produces a kit containing latex gloves, tourniquets, a heat blanket and bandages. It costs $160

$260 for this one.

 
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I love the second one....says all items have a long expiry dat....up to 2022! So you have to replace the whole thing. Easier to just go to Urbnsurf at Tulla.... Sharkfree.
 
Given we had 13 deaths globally from shark attacks last year I'd take the risk and keep my $260. Those odds are pretty good.
 
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Given we had 13 deaths globally from shark attacks last year I'd take the risk and keep my $260. Those odds are pretty good.
how many deaths would there have been without the world first shark attack hemorrhaging kits? im guessing thousands.
 
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