Nets gobbling funds, not sharks

The Dunedin City Council is the only local authority in New Zealand to maintain shark nets, and there has not been a shark fatality anywhere in the country in 35 years, writes the author. Photo supplied.

One shark says to the other, "Don't eat the hard bits on their backs - they make you fart."

The humour ticks many boxes.

It is delightfully backwards, with the sharks as connoisseurs and top predators instead of us, a minority group [the scuba fraternity] are victims, there is a touch of potty humour, and we are able to briefly laugh at our deep-seated fears - of sharks in particular, and being out of our depth in foreign environments in general.

Our fear of sharks subsumes many deeper fears - the unknown of ocean depths, bloody dismemberment, other larger carnivores, racks of razor-sharp teeth, loss of family and friends, and sudden horrible death.

These fears surfaced surprisingly at a recent council meeting, where the annual DCC spending of $38,000 on shark nets was questioned.

Some senior councillors in particular remembered the shocking St Clair shark attacks from the 1960s and were strongly opposed to any suggestion the shark net spending be stopped.

Cr Collins argued passionately, saying the shark bell at St Clair was not there for nothing, and Cr Brown said he had personally known of two local victims of shark attacks and there was no way he would ever vote against the spending on shark nets.

The sincerity and intense emotion of these pleas was obvious, and it carried the day for probably another year of provably useless shark net spending. Facts seem not to matter much in this council decision, as facts appear to have little to do with many council decisions.

Emotion tends to rule the roost generally, at least partly because factual information is scarce or skewed, but also because voter emotion plays a large part in which candidates get elected to council in the first place.

Not many people seem to realise our shark nets do not form a barrier to keep sharks away from the beach. There are just four of them buoyed in a broken line offshore covering less than 5% of the direct passage from open sea to shore.

St Clair-St Kilda beach is 3.5km long and averages 20m deep; the four nets total 800m long and 5m deep.

Cr Collins has argued there has not been a shark fatality in Dunedin since the nets were put in 35 years ago.

However, the DCC is the only local authority in New Zealand to maintain shark nets, and there has not been a shark fatality anywhere in the country for 35 years.

University of Otago marine science department Associate Prof Mike Barker said the nets "do nothing except provide swimmers with an illusion of safety". (ODT 1/1/2011). The nets only catch smallish shark species unlikely to cause human casualties, and these sharks get caught swimming away from the beach as often as swimming towards it.

Ocean Zoo director Craig Thorburn, of Auckland, said none of the sharks caught in Dunedin's nets over the past 35 years could be considered a danger to people. DCC staff have no record of a great white ever being caught in the nets.

Our $38,000 per annum shark nets make swimmers about as safe as using string for a seat belt.