Save Our Sharks

"When you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain, and not necessarily at the top" Jacques Cousteau
When the Barnett Government announced a new policy for shark hazard management using lethal drum lines in late 2013, the WA Greens were among the first to respond, and maintained their opposition until the cull plan was scrapped.
However, concerns for sharks remain. The State government’s ‘Serious Threat’ guidelines, adopted in late 2014, will allow large sharks tagged for scientific tracking purposes to be killed when swimming past Fisheries’ tracking network. These guidelines fail scrutiny by science and logic – there is clearly no safety gain to killing a tagged shark.
The population of 'great white' sharks off south-western Australia is listed as vulnerable in Federal and State law.
The Greens advocate strongly for better methods to protect people, including where appropriate:

• ecologically sound shark-proof swimming enclosures,
• ‘SharkSpotters’-style surveillance,
• research into improved personal shark repellents
• better public warning systems; and
• information about how people can reduce their risk.

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