RealSurf Surfers' Forum

So we know where they spawn? Bomb opportunity right there.
We owe it to our kids.

As an Australian citizen and speaking for Australian
Citizens I say if men wanna fish, let em
Fish.

Sharks, they roam.

Though they return regularly to some places.
From
http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/s ... n_id=64470

Residency and site fidelity
Great White Sharks do not appear to reside permanently in one area, though can display significant site fidelity. Some sharks tagged at the Neptune Islands, off Port Lincoln in South Australia, have revisited the site at the same time of year on consecutive years (CMAR 2007). Juvenile, subadult and adult Great White Sharks combine periods of residency at a limited number of sites with movement between these sites (Bruce & Bradford 2008; Weng et al. 2007).
Three primary residency regions were identified in eastern Australia for juvenile Great White Sharks by Bruce and Bradford (2008):

Corner Inlet/Lakes Entrance (Victoria)
Stockton Beach/Hawks Nest (NSW)
Fraser Island (Queensland).

Juvenile Great White Sharks tagged at Stockton Beach showed significant site fidelity (Bruce & Bradford 2008). Nearly all activity was restricted to the northern half of the beach. Sharks that departed and subsequently returned did so to this same area, even after journeys of hundreds of kilometres away from the beach. At Stockton Beach, when tagged juvenile Great White Sharks departed from this area, they moved along the entire eastern Australian range north to Queensland and south to Bass Strait waters. One shark was also recorded moving to New Zealand waters (Bruce & Bradford 2008).

Braithy wrote:

and anyone who uses the word "stakeholders," needs a whole clenched fist up the bum too.

Refer to the photo to your right

She's got 2 "stakeholders"

Nick Carroll wrote:I am not sure if as a fisherman you would have seen a whole lot of evidence of the great white shark migration, I imagine you would have been seeing a lot of other kinds of shark, mako and bronze and the like, but a lot of them might have gone missing when there are big tigers or white sharks around.

Yeah all kinds of sharks, I didn't often get a good look at them, they just "shark" your catches while winding fish in to the boat. Common to see them zipping around on the surface in certain spots. I'd say the most common sharks I could I.D were Hammerheads, Bronzies and Whites.
Tigers are the most common shark seen way out near the shelf.
Same fishing off the rocks, some days you just can't get a fish back to the rocks without getting sharked.
As you said somewhere else, sharks are very common inshore, all the time. Most of the ocean floor off the NSW coast is a marine desert. There is a long continuous ribbon of reef in about 100 metres of water stretching from south of Sydney, up to the mid north coast. It's about 17Kms offshore at Swansea, but closer in other areas. Then there is the continental shelf, about 50 kms out from Newcastle, closer in other places.
So those 3 features, the shelf, the 100 metre reefs and the shore, are mainly where it's all at for fishies in NSW. The rest is just sand.

lostman wrote:

el rancho wrote: these sydney work-a-daddies are tucked away safe and sound in their cubicles and are probably lucky to tea-bag around bronte for an hour on a weekend.

So "core"

jimmy wrote:I'd like to know what a "real industry type" is ?

Maurice Cole.. that's one who I was talking about anyway

You are a fucking clown and way out of your element

marauding mullet wrote:

Nick Carroll wrote:How close in do whales swim at Ballina/Byron? Like the general migratory group? Do they generally come in within 2k of the coast or closer. or are they out 8-10k?

I don't know about up there, but in the Newcastle, Port Stephens, Central Coast area whales come real close on the their way north. Like right into calm beaches to stop with their calves for a few hours, and sometimes only a hundred metres or so from the shore while travelling.
On the way south however, they seem to be further out, maybe 10 to 20 Kms, perhaps hitching a ride on the East Australian Current which is just starting to push South around then, but the EAC can only be felt at that distance from shore or further.

I fished offshore in a boat for 20 years in that entire coast and never noticed any relationship between whale migration season and shark numbers.

The only thing I did notice about shark numbers was that they seemed to increase a lot around Jan, Feb, March and April when the ocean is literally alive with Slimey Mackerel, Marlin, Tuna, Dolphin Fish that come south with the EAC.

the only place I've seen sharks multiple times is Catho

Ringmaster wrote:

el rancho wrote:

lostman wrote:

el rancho wrote: these sydney work-a-daddies are tucked away safe and sound in their cubicles and are probably lucky to tea-bag around bronte for an hour on a weekend.

So "core"

jimmy wrote:I'd like to know what a "real industry type" is ?

Maurice Cole.. that's one who I was talking about anyway

You are a fucking clown and way out of your element

He's right Lostman. Unfortunately you aren't part of the 'Realsurf Regulars Mens Shed' so you've got no credibility whatsoever. These blokes are waaaay cooler than any of the muppets posting on Swellnet forums.

Nah, just like you, lostman is a dullard and completely devoid of wit, humour or the skills to navigate sarcasm.

ER isn't cool, he is a knob!

I'm so simple i had to google dullard!

Don't you ever change ER

you need help fong

fongss wrote:I think your all a pack of pricks

Is there a collective noun for this.

All I could find is a pin of pricks.

A prickle of pricks ?

While searching found, a smug of hipsters.

c'mon guys think of the children.

we're all mongs, pricks and pooftas. me especially.

foamy wrote:Sharks, they roam.

Though they return regularly to some places.
From
http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/s ... n_id=64470

Residency and site fidelity
Three primary residency regions were identified in eastern Australia for juvenile Great White Sharks by Bruce and Bradford (2008):

Corner Inlet/Lakes Entrance (Victoria)
Stockton Beach/Hawks Nest (NSW)
Fraser Island (Queensland).
.

Corner Inlet is near Wilsons Promontory whereas Lakes Entrance is much further north in Gippsland. That's a huge area. Or is there a second Corner Inlet in Victoria to which you refer?

Corner Inlet/Lakes Entrance. No, just the one I reckon. They are talking about an approximately 200 kms stretch.
I guess it indicates just how far they normally do roam when 200 kms is considered staying local for a while.

Nick Carroll wrote:

marauding mullet wrote:

Nick Carroll wrote:How close in do whales swim at Ballina/Byron? Like the general migratory group? Do they generally come in within 2k of the coast or closer. or are they out 8-10k?

I don't know about up there, but in the Newcastle, Port Stephens, Central Coast area whales come real close on the their way north. Like right into calm beaches to stop with their calves for a few hours, and sometimes only a hundred metres or so from the shore while travelling.
On the way south however, they seem to be further out, maybe 10 to 20 Kms, perhaps hitching a ride on the East Australian Current which is just starting to push South around then, but the EAC can only be felt at that distance from shore or further.

I fished offshore in a boat for 20 years in that entire coast and never noticed any relationship between whale migration season and shark numbers.

The only thing I did notice about shark numbers was that they seemed to increase a lot around Jan, Feb, March and April when the ocean is literally alive with Slimey Mackerel, Marlin, Tuna, Dolphin Fish that come south with the EAC.

Yeah well here in Syd they seem to mostly travel between 3 and 6km offshore and move pretty fast on the way north and a bit slower on the way south. A very rare one or two will come in a lot closer, whether it's because they're sick or calving or whatever I don't know. It always vaguely freaks me out when people insist on dashing out to whales when they're inshore; it's like they're plugging straight into a chain of life about which they know nothing.

I am not sure if as a fisherman you would have seen a whole lot of evidence of the great white shark migration, I imagine you would have been seeing a lot of other kinds of shark, mako and bronze and the like, but a lot of them might have gone missing when there are big tigers or white sharks around. The white sharks along Australia's east coast come from spawning grounds off eastern Victoria and Bass Strait and follow the migration all the way up as far as Tonga; they cash in on the awesome feeding opportunities, cleaning up dead whales and calves out of the generic mass of living tissue moving up and down through that period each year. Maybe the white shark population has remained static as the humpback population has exploded but that would seem to defy how food chains work.

Maybe up your end of the beaches Nick, but lower down the humpbacks are commonly closer to the shoreline than three kays. Between North Head and Long Reef quite a lot seem to hug the coast a bit more than further up the metro coast. See a crap load of em around Long Reef while fishing about one to two kay from shore. You get days when there's constant waves of em coming through. Funnily enough the most common place to encounter a big - four metre plus - white, inshore, in Sydney, is the Long Reef fishing grounds. Fisho encounters with whites in Sydney tend to confirm that often commented upon trait of whites: they turn up anywhere, anytime.
As far as tigers, in the Sydney area they are a bottom hugging shark. Free swimming surface encounters are very very rare. But there's still a few crews of specialist shark fishos who have no problems finding a big tiger - to 300-400 kilos - to kill, string up at a weight station, and then dump. They just don't publicize it these days, for obvious reasons. They have to go out to the shelf drop off to find em.
Last thing: IMO fish aggregations are far more of a factor in your chances, as a surfer, of being bit by a (generally smaller) white, than whale migration patterns,

Then there is the argument that the lack of deeper water fish due to overfishing has brought the sharks closer in. Not sure about the science behind that, might just be one of those 'lets link everything that happens to my personal agenda' arguments, but there may be something.

Why have there been, tap wood, no attacks between Wollongong and Tathra? I don't mean recently, but over the years. Current or water temp or geography or ?? And the Tathra attack was a bit one off, really you are going down past Melbourne before you get anything 'regular'.

You definitely get whale migration quite close, you can stand on the Ulladulla lighthouse point and they are virtually swimming under your feet

MrMik wrote:The "Freedom7" arrived yesterday, less than 72hrs after ordering it on-line.

The "Surf Safe" device turned up on Friday, even quicker than the Shark Shield Freedom7, which was ordered Wednesday early morning.

I had a test surf with the Freedom7 yesterday. The experience is somewhere between an electric cattle fence and a TENSE machine. More scared of the device and getting zapped than of a shark, but that was testing behind the nets and drum lines on the Gold Coast. Got zapped a bit a few times, can only imagine what it will be like when the thing ends up between the toes of my front foot during pop-up, or when entangled with another surfer and board.....
The good thing about the surf-test so far is this: The Freedom7 has both electrodes in the water when paddling on my favourite board, and when surfing it with the rear foot on the tail. It also has a little rope loop in the middle, the leash can be fed through this. I am not sure if that increases or reduces entanglement rates, but it allows to grab the leash and then get a hold of the antenna exactly half-way between the electrodes. No zapping that way.

Today, I'll test both devices on myself, the kids and on my pet GWS.

It turned out that my oscilloscope is cactus, but I found another working one. Not really experienced with the use of it, but I'm getting some realistic results, need to think them through a bit more to make sense of it.

Just touching on what ctd said. I remember my grandad telling me in the lead up to his death. He was a fisho, a professional one for 40 odd years.

He'd watched over his lifetime fish stocks plummet from over fishing. He said all the way back in the 90's that it'd come to point where if he was me, he'd give up surfing. Reckoned all the sharks he saw out deep and in remote places would start moving closer to land (ie river mouths etc) to look for food.

So tuna - a deep sea fish, and known favourite of the White - stocks the world over are down... Salmon - a coast/ shallow water and bombie dwelling fish - stocks in Australia are through the roof thanks to the cessation of commercial salmon fishing.

Maybe the old bugger was onto something?

The biggest curiosity for me about Ballina/ Byron right now is the chopper each day finds the same 5 mtr white closish to shore... A shark that big would be feasting on whale and seal and other sharks. None of which would be enticing it into shore to hang around. Unless it's looking for male to mate with? Boo?

Interesting listening to the mayor of Richmond. Reckons the shire can't afford nets or drumlines and he opposes a cull... Then went on to say he's looking into commercial fishing licenses.

Does that mean he's following the ocean is overfished theory too?

Surfed down the coast near Byron with a photographer mate y'day. Nice little peelers on an A+ bank like that on a Saturday are normally pretty crowded. We sat on a bank each and surfed for over an hour. Never saw another human.

Bumped into a few crew at a bakery post surf. They seemed to think we're mad for surfing. Never mind we never saw any marine activity, not even a fish.

The best bit was how this pretty hardcore crew are saying they're selling their boards and buying dirtbikes... They're over the ocean.

Could we see a radical shift (reduction) in surfing numbers from the shark activity? it'd be nice. Although I suspect over the next week or two, the Sharks will clear out being the migratory creatures they are, and it'll be business as usual in the water.