t’s been a summer of shark hunts, but are the politicians’ responses to the perceived threat of attack justified?
Perhaps it will be remembered as the Great Shark Hunt of 2011, prompted by three fatal attacks in quick succession off Australia’s western coastline.
According to a recent article in The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), a shark cull — authorized by the government of Western Australia to find what many were speculating was a “rogue” great white, and to rid the waters of other potential maneaters — was only the fifth such hunt of the year.
Shark attacks in Russia, the Seychelles, Reunion Island and Mexico similarly led officials to spring into action, mainly to reassure a terrified public it seems.
The WA state government, meanwhile, reportedly given the go-ahead for any great white sharks to be killed if they posed a threat to human life.
Now, Christopher Neff, a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney into public responses to “shark-bite incidents” off South Africa and the United States, has penned a timely response to the hype (although, with just a handful of recent stories on shark attacks in this column generating more than 10,000 page views, we of course consider it legitimate coverage of a serious public safety concern).
Neff tries to turn attention to prevention rather than a knee-jerk political cure.
Despite the nightmare-invoking details of the attacks of Western Australia, Neff’s SMH article makes you want to go back in the water, be it Perth, Sydney or that unspecified place in New England where Sheriff Martin Brody (almost) met his toothy match.
He starts by arguing that while the public’s concern about the risks is reasonable, swimmers “are being offered a political solution to a public safety problem.”
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