Perth residents overwhelmingly prefer non-lethal responses to shark attacks, a new survey shows. Seventy-five per cent of those polled said they wanted money be spent on education and research rather than catching the shark, according to a survey published by the University of Sydney on Wednesday.
The survey was conducted between June 8 and 15, two days after university lecturer Doreen Collyer was fatally mauled by a great white shark while diving 1km off the Mindarie marina, in Perth’s northern suburbs, and five days after surfer Ben Gerring died in hospital from wounds also sustained in a great white attack.
Of the 600 respondents, who were weighted toward suburbs near the Mindarie and Mandurah beaches, only 5% supported “hunting” a shark involved in a fatal attack, and 6% supported setting baited drum lines. A further 11% supported the use of shark nets, considered a lethal policy for the tendency of sharks to get caught in them.
Of those who supported non-lethal policies, 25% supported conducting more research into human-shark interactions, 14% supported a public education campaign, and 8% said the shark should just be left alone.
The remaining 25% supported investing in non-lethal technologies, like electronic shark shields.
It is Western Australian government policy to set baited hooked drumlines after a shark attack to catch a shark determined to be a “serious threat” to community safety. Drumlines were set after both fatal attacks this month and a 4.2m great white shark was caught and killed close to the area where Gerring was attacked.
The attacks reignited a campaign to reduce shark numbers by either allowing shark fishing or resuming the controversial shark cull program, which was abandoned after a damning assessment by the Environmental Protection Authority.
The researcher, Chris Neff, said the survey results showed that despite media rhetoric, such measures did not have public support.
“The fact is that while [people calling for tougher shark policy] are the loudest, they are not the majority,” he told Guardian Australia.
He said the practice of trying to catch and kill sharks involved in attacks in WA was out of step with public thought.
“There’s not an agenda in this research,” he said. “If supporters for the policy were the silent majority, then we would want to find them.”
Neff said that 53% of survey respondents said they thought the primary purpose of killing a shark after an attack was to calm the public, while only 25% thought it was to protect the public.
Asked who was to blame for shark attacks, 59% said no one was to blame and 52% said they believed shark bites were accidental, compared to 22% who said they thought sharks intentionally bit humans.
The results mirrored a similar survey again commissioned by Neff in Ballina, on the New South Wales north coast, in January, which found that 83% of people supported non-lethal responses to shark attacks and 4% thought the shark should be hunted.
