Shark Nets May Prove Danger To Marine Life
You're reading Shark Nets May Prove Danger To Marine Life, posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 1:45 pm in Fish, News, on BrainBloggers at the AquaMarine Life blog. More after the jump.
Shark nets will be going into place off the beaches along Wollongong to Newcastle. Many people are grateful for the safety nets while other feel that they are to dangerous and could harm the balance and lives of other underwater creatures.
Greens MP Ian Cohen believes it is possible that the nets will kill whales that are migrating and even endanger the grey nurse sharks without even working to keep people safe. Yet, the State Government argues that the nets are effective in a way to protect swimmers from unwanted and highly dangerous shark attacks.
Mr Cohen yesterday accused Fisheries Minister Ian Macdonald of being more interested in appearances than either swimmers or the marine life which becomes tangled in the nets. “Under the watch of this minister we could lose an apex species, the grey nurse – the labrador of the sea,” Mr Cohen said.
But Macdonald said the timing of the netting was designed to avoid the main whale migration season. “The Government’s number one priority is to protect NSW beachgoers,” Mr Macdonald said. “We have had one fatality on a meshed beach in 70 years [since netting was introduced]. Previously in NSW there would be one fatality every year.”
Cohen has asked the minister to delay putting out the nets until November 1st, the end of the whale migrations. He believes that the shark nets offer little protection to swimmers because they sag. “They sag well below the surface, there is often five metres of clear ocean for sharks to swim over them”. He thinks instead that they should look to electronic devices much like the ones that Australia uses.