A 3.5 metre tiger shark has been caught, tagged and released at Sydney's Newport beach as part of a 90-day trial of SMART (Shark-Management-Alert-in-Real-Time) drumlines along the New South Wales coast.
Fourteen sharks, including 10 dusky whalers were snagged off Sydney, out of a total of 43 sharks caught at Newcastle and on the South Coast and North Coast.
On the South Coast, species caught by the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) included six white and five tiger sharks.
SMART drumlines are non-lethal and designed to send a GPS when a shark has been captured.
"The trial is helping us learn more about shark movements and the effectiveness of this technology," Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said.
"We're catching not only smaller sharks but also some some quite large ones — a large tiger shark was caught just a couple of days ago and released."
There are shark nets in place at Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle beaches from September 1 to April 30 each year.
"Clearly they [the drumlines] have been a success but it is too soon yet to say 'we'll just take out the nets and replace the nets with these drumlines'," Mr Marshall said.
"We need to do a bit more analysis before any of those sort of decisions can be made.
"The beauty of this technology is that it not only prevents shark encounters but also allows scientists to monitor the tagged sharks and learn more about their behaviour.
"We've seen one of these sharks that's been tagged go all the way to New Zealand, up to Papua New Guinea and back down the Queensland coast."
Mr Marshall says drumlines will remain in place on the North Coast, even though the trial has finished elsewhere.
After the shark is tagged, they are relocated and released approximately one kilometre offshore.
The NSW shark tagging program is now estimated to be the largest in the world.
