Nth NSW sharks. Can they p!ss off already?

[MrMik]

As for teaching sharks to stay away from human swimmers or surfers, it may well be enough if a significant proportion of divers, surfers and swimmers wear electronic shark repellents.

While shark and other sea-life numbers rise back to more normal levels in some parts of the oceans, the complete depletion of most life in most of the marine environments continues unabated.

If humanity manages to turn things around and allows functioning eco-systems to do their thing again (i.e. keep the planet alive and evolving), and manages to reduce the massive over-population issue, then there will be less surfers and swimmers, and many more sharks, all the time.

[MrMik]

it's not as crazy as it sounds. in the NT they are training quolls not to eat cane toads.

they catch the quoll and feed them for a few months ... then they start to feed them cane toad-poisoned sausage which looks like a cane toad. it gives them a non-lethal dose of the poison, but it makes them sick for a week at a time.

they claim by the 4th or 5th time of feeding the quolls the quolls will rather starve over eating them. they then release them into the wild and the quolls are no longer killing themselves by eating cane toads.

not only that, but this process is also genetically imprinting this information into quoll dna, so future gens are no longer eating the toads too.

It seems that quolls are slow learners.

I'm tempted to make the bold prediction that they will not last 20 million years as a species, as the GWS apparently has.

How is the imprinting onto quoll DNA supposed to work?

[Trev]

it's not as crazy as it sounds. in the NT they are training quolls not to eat cane toads.

they catch the quoll and feed them for a few months ... then they start to feed them cane toad-poisoned sausage which looks like a cane toad. it gives them a non-lethal dose of the poison, but it makes them sick for a week at a time.

they claim by the 4th or 5th time of feeding the quolls the quolls will rather starve over eating them. they then release them into the wild and the quolls are no longer killing themselves by eating cane toads.

not only that, but this process is also genetically imprinting this information into quoll dna, so future gens are no longer eating the toads too.

It seems that quolls are slow learners.

I'm tempted to make the bold prediction that they will not last 20 million years as a species, as the GWS apparently has.

How is the imprinting onto quoll DNA supposed to work?

It's already worked for crows except they taught themselves and it seems to be passed on through dna.

[Nick Carroll]

Well how about going the other way. Like teach yourself about sharks through direct contact. I don't mean one of those cage shark dive things with big white sharks, but a series of open water non cage dives with the vastly more common species, whalers, Galapagos, nurse, sand sharks etc

It'd really open your eyes about how sharks behave around other living things, including us.

I'm only talking from personal experience, but every second I've spent underwater looking at sharks has been a second well spent, some of it has felt a bit dangerous but in every case the danger has been predictably and instantly eased by how you choose to behave in response to the sharks.

Re shark education, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of sharks are already a bit spun out by their contact with humans, it's probably why they are generally very wary of people indeed.

Not a bad idea, I'd like to go diving again and may well go for a dive or several with the intent to meet sharks. Maybe even something to do with shark protection, surfer protection, fish guidance systems etc.

I have open water, advanced open water, rescue diver and research diver certificates, but have not gone diving for 10 years or thereabouts.

But, my level of education about sharks (or any level of lack thereof) will not change the behaviour of those sharks that might try me for lunch while I'm surfing.

yeah but it might change your behaviour.

[ctd]

They have been trying to teach Jews not to be born with a foreskin for 2000 years and it still hasn't been passed down through the DNA. Quolls have no chance

(Learned behaviour on the other hand)

[Slobadan Madicubich]

This subject is as important as legalising gay marriages

[foamy]

"Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species—including man—crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue." - Werner Herzog.

[MrMik]

yeah but it might change your behaviour.

With all due respect, I don't yet see which behaviour of mine needs changing.

Do you think I should join the "The risk is negligible, stop worrying, you wuss!" brigade?

Or maybe I should join the quickly growing crowd who are proposing the indiscriminate killing of sharks and other marine life in nets and/or on drum lines?

Or just shut up about it?

For now, I prefer to continue to think it through, sometimes in public, and to experiment to get first hand experience where I can.

I prefer to educate myself about the alternatives to either ignore the issue, or stop surfing, or cull a lot of animals including a few sharks.

I have learned that it is often essential to give people choices, and that you must explain the available choices including the likely pro's and con's, so that you can then refuse to give support to bad choices. That may include making the worst choice unavailable.

The commonly mentioned choices available to surfers are:

1) Put up with it, stop whining, enjoy being part of the food chain.
2) Stop surfing, then you are 100% safe from shark attacks.
3) Support the culling of sharks including the dis-proportionately large by-catch problem, and continue to pretend all is good although you can only enjoy this life-style because of peak-everything.

In order to be able to say "No" (and to justify the recommendation to enforce it with authority) to option 3, you need to offer other alternatives than 1 and 2.
That is because option 1 does not work when you want to take your kids surfing, or if you meet the surviving relatives or the disabled victims of shark attacks regularly in your everyday life; and number 2 does not work because you are dealing with addicts who have learned to use every trick in the book to rationalise why the surfing lifestyle must continue. That of course includes the "Consider all the livelihoods that depend on the bathing tourists'" argument.

[el rancho]

Has the shark situation got you rattled mrmike? You seem a little rattled.

Where do you live and surf?

[rmb]

Triple J program the Hack this evening had a segment on sharks on the Nth Coast of NSW one of the callers was Stave from Ballina don't think it was Shearer he wasn't after a cull.

[Nick Carroll]

yeah but it might change your behaviour.

With all due respect, I don't yet see which behaviour of mine needs changing.

Do you think I should join the "The risk is negligible, stop worrying, you wuss!" brigade?

Or maybe I should join the quickly growing crowd who are proposing the indiscriminate killing of sharks and other marine life in nets and/or on drum lines?

Or just shut up about it?

Nah it just seems you haven't really been in the water with sharks very much, so you're basing all your thoughts and actions on third party suppositions.

Sharks in your mind are one thing, sharks as actual living creatures are quite another.

So what I am suggesting is, break the fourth wall.

[Beanpole]

My biggest real one on one with a shark that I actually saw was a little reef shark at tiny Sengigi. Paddled in. Have been out with a large tiger shark in the water......but I didn't know. Heaps more spooky scenarios that felt sharky.

[bomboraa]

They seem capable of some learned behaviour if south coast commercial fisher's story is true as told to a mate.
He says he was told it's common for sharks to follow trawlers in to port, hoping for trash fish scraps. The sharks started following any vessel with a thudding diesel engine, trawler or not. They did not follow boats with outboard engines with a different acoustic signature.

[Beerfan]

My biggest real one on one with a shark that I actually saw was a little reef shark at tiny Sengigi. Paddled in. Have been out with a large tiger shark in the water......but I didn't know. Heaps more spooky scenarios that felt sharky.

I snorkelled with reef Sharks in the Maldives. Heaps of them, not very big but not scary at all. They had no interest in us, just swam past without a second look

[carvin marvin]

It should be noted that not all shark sightings are being reported to the Ballina shark reports facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/ballinasharkreports?fref=ts
Prime tv news mentioned that a hanglider pilot spotted one off Lennox Head at 2 pm Monday the 17th, when I checked the facebook page there was no mention of this.

[el rancho]

There's got to be an investigtion!

[crabmeat thompson]

the big one at hastings has been hanging out there for years. could be a tiger which has taken up residence, maybe?

should we be taking a bit of comfort With so many sightings yet only rare interactions/encounters

it's amazing how many sharks we can find, once we start actively looking.

[alakaboo]

I've got a couple of friends who are pilots, if you do a low altitude flight over the coast on a clear day there is a shark at least every kilometre.
Has held true everywhere from Ballina to Rockhampton