Shark expert shocked at cull backdown
A South African shark cull expert who has decades of experience in the job has told of his surprise at the State Government's backflip on drum lines, saying the baited hooks are "the way to go" on the Kwazulu-Natal coast.
The Kwazulu-Natal Sharks Board is expected to get the go-ahead today to install about 35 more drum lines along the coast north of Durban, bringing the province's total to 114 drum lines and 23 nets.
The board's head of operations Mike Anderson-Reade, who met the architect of WA's drum lines policy in June to show him KZN's shark cull program, was sceptical of Premier Colin Barnett's new push to pre-emptively target "rogue" sharks loitering at popular beaches.
"I'm surprised they've tossed the whole thing out because there are number of options (with drum lines) that may or may not pacify environmentalists," he said, referring to technology that sends alerts when an animal is caught so it can be released alive and taken out of the area.
In the past seven years, the KZN Sharks Board has replaced a third of its 33 nets with drum lines, with one net being swapped for four drum lines to maintain effectiveness.
Mr Anderson-Reade said they found the drum lines reduced the catch of whales, dolphins and other non-target species by half.
“It will obviously help us at this time of year,We’re in the whale season now,” he said. “The humpback whales have come back really strongly since whaling was stopped.
“The less rigid gear, netting we have, the better from a collision point of view.
“The drum lines are certainly the way to go in terms of catching the sharks you are required to catch and not catching the non-target species,” he said.
Mr Anderson-Reade said while there was still some opposition to the shark nets and drum lines in Kwazulu-Natal, the authorities had to look at the bigger picture and how a shark attack affected the whole province.
“This province depends very heavily on tourism and 80 per cent of the tourists who visit the province utilise the beaches. So the issue of shark attacks is very much an economic one in KZN,” he said.
“If we lost our beaches to tourists because people don’t want to get bitten, that would bring economic problems to the province because we rely on the beaches to bring tourists here.”
He said the idea of "rogue" sharks was not proved and it is difficult to shoot a shark.
The board announced yesterday that it would start testing a 100m-long electronic shark repellent cable off a Cape Town beach next month that emits a low-frequency signal.
