Shark hunters pursue killer great white
Source: Agencies |
October 24, 2011, Monday
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Print Edition
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SHARK hunters set baited hooks off Australia's southwest coast yesterday hoping to catch a great white that killed a US diver in the area's third recent fatal attack.
Department of Fisheries manager Tony Cappelluti said crews took the extraordinary step of setting six lines with hooks off Rottnest Island tourist haven, where witnesses saw a three-meter great white nudge their diveboat after George Thomas Wainwright of Texas was killed on Saturday.
Wainwright, 32, had been living in a beachside suburb of the west coast city of Perth for several months.
Cappelluti said the hooks were removed from the water after six hours of fruitless hunting for fear the bait would attract more sharks to the area. The hunt could resume if the crew of a fisheries boat patroling the area spots a shark.
Cappelluti said: "There have been no sightings, so that would probably indicate the shark has left the area."
The beaches at Rottnest were due to remain closed until this morning as a precaution, he said.
Scientists have warned against an overreaction to the third fatal shark attack off Australia's southwest coast in less than two months. Australia averages a little more than one fatal shark attack a year.
Barbara Weuringer, a University of Western Australia marine zoologist and shark researcher, urged against a shark hunt, saying there was no way of telling which shark was the killer without killing it and opening its stomach.
"It sounds a little bit like taking revenge, and we are talking about an endangered species," she said.
She added that the increase in shark attacks could reflect the human population increase in the southwest, and suggested a more productive response would be to move shark spotting flights from their November start date.
But a southwest coast-based diving tourism operator called on the Western Australia state government to kill sharks that pose a threat to humans.
"Nuisance sharks should be dispatched to remove the risk of future attack," Rockingham Wild Encounters director Terry Howsonsaid.
Department of Fisheries manager Tony Cappelluti said crews took the extraordinary step of setting six lines with hooks off Rottnest Island tourist haven, where witnesses saw a three-meter great white nudge their diveboat after George Thomas Wainwright of Texas was killed on Saturday.
Wainwright, 32, had been living in a beachside suburb of the west coast city of Perth for several months.
Cappelluti said the hooks were removed from the water after six hours of fruitless hunting for fear the bait would attract more sharks to the area. The hunt could resume if the crew of a fisheries boat patroling the area spots a shark.
Cappelluti said: "There have been no sightings, so that would probably indicate the shark has left the area."
The beaches at Rottnest were due to remain closed until this morning as a precaution, he said.
Scientists have warned against an overreaction to the third fatal shark attack off Australia's southwest coast in less than two months. Australia averages a little more than one fatal shark attack a year.
Barbara Weuringer, a University of Western Australia marine zoologist and shark researcher, urged against a shark hunt, saying there was no way of telling which shark was the killer without killing it and opening its stomach.
"It sounds a little bit like taking revenge, and we are talking about an endangered species," she said.
She added that the increase in shark attacks could reflect the human population increase in the southwest, and suggested a more productive response would be to move shark spotting flights from their November start date.
But a southwest coast-based diving tourism operator called on the Western Australia state government to kill sharks that pose a threat to humans.
"Nuisance sharks should be dispatched to remove the risk of future attack," Rockingham Wild Encounters director Terry Howsonsaid.
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