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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

White Shark cull, Western Australia: Someone make a film about this please

Tom Hamilton said:
An unsavory trade with unsavory characters, and very profitable, this from Wiki;

According to Ramsay, shark finning in Costa Rica is "A multi-billion dollar industry, completely unregulated. We traced some of the biggest culprits to Costa Rica. These gangs operate from places like forts, with barbed wire and gun towers."[4] In response to poor incomes and pressure, local fisherman are forced into harvesting shark fins, despite only getting about one dollar per pound on an average, less than a third of its total retail value.[5] Corrupt politicians are silenced with a fee to ignore government regulations.[6] The practice involves sharks being caught by a horizontal drag line with many baited hooks, known as longline fishing. According to biologist Jorge Ballestero of the Costa Rican Sea Turtle Restoration Project (Pretoma) “Costa Rica has become intricately linked to this trade for two reasons: It has the biggest longliner fleet in the hemisphere, and it allows international vessels dedicated to the exploitation and trade of shark fins to land here.”[3]

The Taiwanese mafia dominate the shark finning industry in Costa Rica, although Indonesian gangs also have a foothold in the market.[3] The Taiwanese and Indonesian mafia operate private docks in the Puntarenas area, notably Inversiones Cruz Dock and Harezan Dock and several others where some 95% of all catches are brought in, transported by truck to San José and flown mostly to Hong Kong.[3] According to the Costa Rican customs adviser Omar Jiminez, at least three boats full of shark fins enter the ports in Puntarenas every week.[7]Kaohsiung in Taiwan is one of the biggest ports in the world for importing shark fins. They are brought in from overseas and are placed out to dry in the sun on residential rooftops near the port.

However, it should be noted that various shark cartilage industries in the country exist, depending on the import of cartilages from other countries.[8][9] Costa Rica is mentioned as one such country where a leading processing plant is said to be purchasing raw cartilages from any source in the world to carry out semi or primary processing before exporting it, particularly to the USA.[9] The USA then markets it worldwide in the processed shark cartilage powder form, in four or five brand names.[9]
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For the amount of sharks talked about here, finning is unlikely to cover the costs. In third world countries the costs are maybe a tenth, even a hundredth. The price per pound quoted. is that to the fishermen? If it is not then the fishermen might get a tenth of that. Dried also significantly reduces the weight requiring more fin per pound.
 
Ted Parkes said:
I read more people die from Coconuts falling on their head each year then shark attacks on Scuba Divers. Surfers are another story. I have been diving for many years .. all over the world and encountered sharks on many of the dives but would never do a Shark dive that involved chumming the water.. Its just wrong!
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Lots more coconuts.

Few sharks lots of people=fewer attacks, lots more crocodiles = more attacks, lots more coconuts even more people wondering around ,= more chance of one falling on you, lots more nuts. Those are the figures. I think we need to take a calm look at how things weigh up otherwise anything we make runs the risk of converting viewers to nuts, which will make them unreasonable in the long run, as badly unreasonable as a hick on a hunting frenzy. We owe it to ourselves. When two sides both will never meet to reason, nothing really good can usually be achieved.
 
On the topic of eco-tourism and in particular cage-diving for shark viewing, it has been proposed by a local fisherman with a lifetime of experience, that a practice of attracting great whites to cage dives by burleying ( food attractants ) has altered great white shark behaviours and emboldened them around humans and boats. The shark documentary I linked to earlier in this thread implies by association, that great whites which are exposed to cage-dive activity in south-eastern Australian coastal waters, routinely migrate to the south-west location where the documentary was shot. The great-white which was taken by a huge predator, itself migrated from the documentary location on the south-west coast to the north-west coast and returned. So it is perfectly plausable that cage-dive activity on the south-eastern coast could have conditioned great whites to target humans on our south-west coast where the attacks have occurred. It is also perfectly plausible that culling on our south-western coast to as far north as Perth beaches will threaten the endangered shark population of the entire southern continental coast. - It could be a converse case of "loving" the creatures to death by making inveterate man-eaters of them. There is hypothesis that the perceived need for a shark cull may have fallen into becoming an opportunistic political device to siphon off environmental activist energy from other contemporaneous environmental issues at play in Western Australia. -- That means a documentary, faithful to the entire issue may need to be more broadly researched and that is likely beyond the resources of an independent documentarian or small production entity
 
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I'm sorry but every time I see the 'conditioning' argument thrown in I have to have a giggle to myself. Sharks have been perfect in design for 400m years. They are the ultimate predator. Now give any predator, man included, the option to get a free meal or work for it, what are they gonna choose? Free lunch every time. Take the freeby away and watch how fast they revert to their standard operating procedure.

Most people would be shocked as to how fast their loving domestic pet, Fifo or Tibbles, would revert to their instinctive self sufficiency in the event they were wander too far from home, get lost or worse, get dumped.

You can't alter 400m years of design with a few scraps of fish. What stares most people in the face is that regulation for shark diving operations which always bear the brunt of blame when people get nibbled is this. For the most part dive ops need to operate a certain distance offshore, in many places a number of kilometers, minimum. The public seem to be oblivious to the fact that because these baited lines are government endorsed that it's perfectly fine for them to be deployed closer to shore than the minimum distance required by the shark dive ops to deploy their chum lines. These are baited hooks, a government endorsed baiting program proactively enticing predatory sharks closer to shore than they would otherwise venture if they were interacting with the shark dive ops?

This same thing happens in RSA where the drum lines are less than 500m from shore, and the public still think the NSB is there to protect them??

Wild.
 
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Marc, I of course have to absolutely agree with you on the above stated... And so needs to every one else...

However...

While the free food gets town at them, they do indeed re-appear in greater numbers, and this also one of the concerns at every time there is an overfishing, as the sheer amount of blood and bate thrown in to those places is simply unimaginable by most...

Now trow in that fact that thousands of sharks get thrown back in too DE-FINNED and it adds up to an insane amount of food...

Which no doubts attracts even more Sharks... And other predators too... But Shark mostly...

So... while Millions of years of evolution will unlikely be altered PERMANENTLY they are currently altered TEMPORARILY and this is actually part of the problem...

This is part of the issues with mistaken identity and serious injuries and or deaths of Humans by Shark attacks, which are nothing more then them testing out if it is eatable...

Tourism is also responsible for this, as they should NOT attract Shark for Tourism purposes and Cage Shark watching via FEEDING them!!

All are contributing to changes in their behavior... And it is not ending anytime soon... Unfortunately!!
 
The argument that chumming for cage dive operations in South Africa has lead to an increase in attacks has yet to be confirmed by science. Cage diving started about the same time that GWS became protected in SA. Since that time, 1991, there has been an increase in attacks. Identically in Western Australia since 1994, or was it 98, when sharks became protected here there has been an even greater than in SA rise in attacks. The conclusion from this data that cage diving causes an increase in attacks ignores the far more likely cause, being that simply in both cases GWS populations returned from the brink of extinction simultaneously to increasing human population and interest in watersports. We do not have cage diving in WA and have experienced identical trends as SA.

Here is an interesting read I have found on SA cage diving in relations to GWS behaviours.

http://saveourseas.com/content/pdf/...ing_Industry_-_Is_there_cause_for_concern.pdf

Quoted from source above

"Work from False Bay and Gansbaai offered us the first insight into this question when we measured the amount of time sharks spent at a boat (contact time) and how this changed over time. At both locations, a majority of the sharks spent progressively less time at the boat with increasing experience (Fig. 6). This finding is contradictory to what we would expect if sharks were being positively conditioned."


This is because though attracted by chum, the sharks are not being rewarded with significant food when they come in to check out the boats. Over time these sharks seemingly learn that it is not worth their time. Which seems logical. The idea that introduction of cage diving to WA waters would be the first opportunity GWS have had to associate boats with food completely ignores the fact that they already do this and have been for a long time because we have a massive commercial and recreational fishing fleet. And often, following these boats does end in the sharks being rewarded with a meal, entirely unlike with cage dive operations. Also. Boats don't tend to look like humans so how sharks associating boats with food means they associate humans in the water with food is another illogical leap.

People get attacked by sharks in the vast majority of cases due to mistaken identity. Sharks in WA are not eating swimmers down at the beach, they are attacking surfers because surfers wear wetsuits and hang out in turbulent water and basically imitate shark prey. In the majority of cases when surfers are attacked the shark realises its mistake and rejects the meal, so they are not being rewarded biologically from this behaviour either. It would be as logical to argue, or equally valid compared to all the other guestimations people make, that once every shark has bitten a human and learned it is not food shark attacks will cease. Why aren't we out there trolling around lures that look like swimmers to teach these intelligent "conditioned" animals that people aren't food?
 
Very well put Trevor.
 
Dwarfism in isolated islands due to competitive pressures and for supply constraints killing off larger individuals, and reduction in sizes of fish stocks where the biggest members are frequently culled is a well known fact by the scientific industry. Breeding of more domesticated individuals is commonly known from the breeding of me seen from modern dogs from ancient wolf stock over time. Some wolves up to the middle ages were able to stand on their hind kegs 6 feet tall and walk around. I have been reading new scientist for around 30 years. Smaller individual sharks are unlikely to attack bigger live humans unless they are truly aggressive (like some species).

Sharks can travel many hundreds of kilometers.
 
Wayne I have to admit I don't really follow what it is you are saying or how exactly it is relevant, are you advocating we should kill off all the sharks large enough to attack a human? Or suggesting that evolution will do that for us? Or that us doing so is evolution?

Bull Sharks would be a good example of a smaller species of shark known to be far more aggressive and dangerous to humans than the GWS. I think we are better of with a few GWS off our coast than the swarms of Bull Sharks that would replace them as the apex predators. Regardless, these arguments for human engineering of environmental systems are silly and have historically led to disaster, remember the Cane Toad?

And GWS are known to travel many thousands of kilometres, tagged sharks have been shown to travel between South Africa and Western Australia and back in a matter of months. It is even possible that our sharks and their sharks are one and the same, an interchangeable population. This is a concern if you happen to believe these sharks are worth conserving because lets say we assume RSA has x amount of Sharks, WA has x, North and South Pacific have x and x and we conclude that there are 2000-4000 sharks worldwide so killing 100 in WA isn't going to matter. Then we find out they we are counting the same sharks in different locations and worldwide we're got 1000-2000, suddenly we've wiped out a 10th of them and upset the balance of great swathes of ocean. There is a place for caution when we don't have all the facts. This whole thing is nothing more than a witch hunt born out of fear, lets not pretend there is anything meritorious about whats going on here.
 
Just commenting on comments I'm following, and stating what the reality is in species modification from a natural selection viewpoint and breeding. You could achieve a lot of the same by breeding a 1000 times smaller sharks and releasing to the wild, or sterilizing all large sharks, which actually might be the best compromise that will make non conservationists laugh in disbelief. but actually work. As such it was not really about the topic but answering a comment (but somebody did ask for solution suggestions).

We are part of nature, the arguments of artificiality are artificial themselves, it is a matter of what balance with the environment we can achieve.

This is our natural selection, but again, I would like to see them preserved and find a balance. Unfortunately finding a few islands to preserve them around is not going to work either, as I pointed out before, due to their very long range travels. They would reach other islands and travel the world. As part of natural selection we could make the world a Paradise, could, but in reality people will stuff it up in evil illogical unreality yet again.

I live less than 2 kilometers from the original cane toad breeding site. A lot of people are silly disasters in their thinking. We know a lot more these days to make better decisions, if there is a will and proper integrity of effort (the source of some of the thinking problems). Note I always said that they should research impacts properly.

I have been reading carefully up till today, and determined to wind back here a day or two ago. I did however point out bull sharks as being a small aggressive species before too, as can be read. This would require breeding for less aggression rather than just size, and impact research. This is the smaller more aggressive breed I mentioned. I also made a comment about sharks long range movements in relation to some comment I cant remember now about doing something out at sea that won't change things because the sharks move do far as I pointed out. I'm sorry Trevor that I didn't quote every comment this time because it makes the posts a bit too long and I assumed people were reading in order to follow what I was referring to.

I may disagree with the conclusions but defend all your right to present a good argument on screen. That's me, more concern with the end product and the truth of it. So take my comments as food for thoughts (in their right reading context) and go do your project. I'll enjoy seeing it, I trust you at least Trevor not to do a hatchet job. However I have seen a lot of un understandable stuff here because they were illogical emotive arguments. I can understand where they come from, but know they don't make sense.

We as humans, illogically pick emotive animals like sharks to passionately argue about, but aren't worried about the millions if species we don't care about, some ant or earth worm going extinct that is not a big threat we don't care about, as if they are nothing. We care for less than 1% of species going extinct because of emotion. There are billions of times more creatures in numbers going extinct than sharks, why aren't each of them as important. It is a moral conspiracy. I rather see them preserved separately from us.

A man I passed on the street one night used to demand that employees prove their point, I'm pretty much like that too. Don't expect me to just fall over in line, prove it. That man was Bill Gates.

Here is your chance with the film to correctly unemotively prove how much of a case there is and let the world make up their minds. I wish you good with it.

I thank you for being so gracious here Trevor, I was not planning to be around so long myself, but am happy I could contribute some ideas towards a great film and maybe a great career opportunity for you. Also sorry for the writing and typos slipping through that makes things hard to understand sometimes, I've been posting on a phone rather than a tablet and under some taxing times makimg typinh and citrectiinbdifficukt. "making typing and correction difficult" (like just then, that is what 'hspoens' to my typing at time and I miss less obvious typos that wreck the meaning of sentences).

Best wishes.
 
Suggestions:

Hmm, now I can read more easily I just realized from your post something. I don't remember if sharks are color blind. they don't see too well from memory. If wet suites were brightly colored instead of black and carried a shark repelling taste/oder, would that reduce/stop the sharks from assuming they are prey and decrease the severity of attacks? Also, a sufficiently colored wet suite might appear the color of the sky, or deep water making a swimmer hardly visible to the shark but maybe perfectly visible to us (if the color response frequencies of shark vision is different from ours). There are certain materials that can divert light around a body, to remove shadows. You can also make materials that shine at the right brightness to match the sky, however sharks have an affinity for sensing electrical currents and used to attack underseas cables for that reason. When I mentioned personal repellent systems previously I envisaged a system to detect a shark approach and set off a adverse reaction, maybe a big flash to scare a shark (however I don't know if that would dissuade a charging shark). There is a few other suggestions that may help sharks and humans coexist. I would not mind wearing even a fluorescent yellow/green wet suite if that turned out the best color. Patterns on the suites and boards might also help the shark think it is something else or not worth it.
 
Wayne feel free to comment to your hearts content, just that last one I did find a little confusing.

So far as any film goes, I started this thread in the hope someone was out there doing something or could do something, knowing i'm not really in that position. Since the thread began this cull has gone from an imminent threat that concerned me to something that is actually happening that sickens me. Its obviously too late to make a film that could stop the cull. Its happening. The best hope for these sharks is people taking direct action such as those sabotaging lines through "civil disobedience'' love that term, through legal challenges which it seems many groups are preparing to launch, and by lobbying Greg Hunt and the federal government not to extend the exemption of the protected species status beyond the April 30th review date.

What this thread did help me realise though is something that i think is very important, and I actually might try to have made into a film. See, personally i have no interest in trying to educate people through documentary on the pro's and con's of making a species go extinct. Its a subject that has been done to death, we learnt this shit in primary school. Anyone watching a film about white sharks is more than likely doing so because they are in awe of them. There is no point in preaching to the converted. They just want to see some wicked footage of a rare and magnificent animal. Similarly, there is no changing the mind of grown and intelligent people who happen to view nature as an enemy or luxury of man to be exploited at will. You either get it or you don't is my personal view as a filmmaker. I could not force myself to dwell on this depressing shit for 90 minutes, either boring the people who already concluded we should share the planet and respectfully cohabitate with nature or explaining extremely simple concepts of impending environmental collapse to people who just aren't interested.

What is clear to me now though is that the future of White Sharks in this state comes down to the intrinsic value placed on them by the powers that control their fate. In this case the GWS population is viewed by the current government as a burden. Kind of in the same way villagers in Uganda used to view Lowland Mountain Gorilla's as a burden because they would occasionally leave the forrest and eat their crops. Saving those Gorilla's from extinction was achieved by convincing the people who shared the habitat with them that they were an asset. Once viewed as an asset, as something that could bring them wealth, killing Gorilla's no longer made sense. I feel a bit bad comparing villagers from the developing world to highly educated leaders of a supposedly advanced and enlightened society like WA though, because those villagers lacked the opportunity to properly educate themselves, but I digress. Our sharks are being wiped out today because nothing has been done to capitalise on the considerable asset they represent to the state. The opportunity of having one of the healthiest populations of one of the worlds true draw card species on our doorstep has not been exploited. And that is where i think the focus of any film should be. And would be if it is up to me.

The angle I have been leaning toward in my thinking the last couple of days is lets make something like one of those surfing movies where a bunch of cool people at the top of their field seek out new horizons to practice their craft. Instead of surfers it'd be natural history filmmakers, underwater cinematographers, and instead of waves it would be images. The first real and extensive images of a previously undocumented population of White Sharks, the deadliest on the planet. Because thats what its about, the animal. I want to protect white sharks for the same reason i should make a film about them, to achieve a deeper appreciation of nature. I could care less about arguing with luddite philistines about why we shouldn't be having a cull. Nor does anyone else really if they are going to sit through 90 minutes of film about sharks. The best way to save them is to create value in them. Create that value by developing industry around them. Start with natural history filmmakers, explore options for tourism operators, invite the scientific community. What we have here is unexplored and unexploited, it may well be every bit as good as what is happening in RSA. Thats the most effective conservation approach, transform intrinsic value. And it makes for the best film, a brief introduction and treatment on the cull, which is essentially an inciting incident, then onto the main show- finding GWS in their natural habitat and learning something new about them, getting killer footage of them doing their thing. [Ideal job for Dragon too just quietly]
 
I would not give up. After the cull, or during it, is the most excellent time for change to prevent it going on in the future. People might have been educated on species extinction, but how many remember or have it in mind? They need reminding and they haven't seen it about sharks. With what's happening now you would get pretty good interest at Perth cinemas or on commercial TV, which could fund it. It does not have to be dry to present facts either. If you include a lot of the ideas here you would have fast paced variety to watch.

Your intro to the cull before the naturalistic section is good, but to somebody who has made up their mind sitting through that honestly might not stop them wishing to load a bullet on a shark. A reason to change is the thing, your idea is good for people like yourself though, but you need wider community support. You can present emotive images in their context, thus is what happens to a shark, this is how it dies I mentioned a go pro and a stuck to put it and the bait on, to get closeups of an attack, I would stick it in its mouth if I were legally allowed to, to get great images (with a stick go pro enclosure design to minimise risk if harm yo the shark). As long as we have a big enough boat and the shark doesn't try to jump into it as happened with the real life story behind jaws I'll be able to get away. Face it, if it was not so scary people would not be in so much awe if it (note religious sentiment by conservationists, that was what Hitler and the Nazi's intended naturalism to be a alternative to religion the creature instead of the creator it says).

You might have asked others to do something Tevor, but that does not mean you can't join them in shaping something really great. If all the team here go in together on it you suddenly would have a lot more man power and funding. As you are all so passionate about it I imagine you all would want to contribute.

Remember (cringe) what I said about top gear, there is your three amigos excitedly tracking form the truth and interviewing people, maybe a bit extreme, but for lite and easy facts, and emotions, a nice formula. Cane toads the movie (rent out the second one, the conquest) is another style. Making it interesting is how to overcome facts and figures, illustrations and animations and simple line graphs to.

Anyway, I'll be prepared to be bored out of my skull if you shoot it like a naturalist documentary, but you better get me to direct cinematography and give me that stick with a few spare go pro's. ;)
 
Wayne this cull has started and will be over [2015] before anything I or anyone else starting today could get to final cut. 2 years is probably pushing it to make a feature length pic featuring GWS. One of the hardest animals on earth to film i'd imagine. 90 minutes of content, mammoth task.

Has nothing to do with giving up, as I said there are more effective measures at hand to stop whats happening today than making a film about it. Asking the question what comes next? Is logical if you accept the reality that response time in this medium is 2 yrs. In 2 years time it is possible GWS numbers will have been culled significantly if direct action has failed. So the most practical thing to do from a conservation point is address the how, as i see it, we got into this mess. And that would be focusing on creating value that demands protection. So as it won't happen again. If we'd built an industry around the opportunities presented by our shark population the government would of never have entertained the idea of a cull. If we have such an industry in the future they at least won't be able to do it again.

At the end of the day this is not even an outcome resulting from lack of public education. It was a decision made by one man, backed by another who have both heard every argument there is from all sides and made the decision anyway. When asked by The West Australian what he thought about people in opposition to the cull Collin Barnet simply said "People are entitled to their opinion." Ergo, peoples opinions aren't a factor capable of saving a shark, ergo a film focused on steering opinion one way or another is mute.

The greater good is served taking a different path and I feel it makes a stronger picture also. All the other stuff is played out in the press on a daily basis anyway, no shortage of TV content getting made about that. It's likely all we'll see in the news for weeks. And they are the better people to tell those stories.
 
why does it need to be a movie? what if its a youtube web series? try to document the daily deaths maybe? anyway i'm volunteering to help with post if the distance isn't problematic. i am free, available, and totally down with sharks! i still think really graphic images are the way to go, but to each there own... the cove was really sickening to see, we need that kind of imagery to convey our sentiments.

i hear about all sorts of people dying from exposure and land based predators and poisonous things. perhaps we can point out the fallacies in this shark craze when in reality lots of things in that country kill 2 or 3 people and up a year? how many people die a year from lightening there? surely there are bigger threats then 2 or so deaths a year from sharks? drunk driving? smokes? to eradicate a species on such few fatalities compared to the relative number of people who swam there per season shows that really the incidence of attack is infinitely small...

I am sure many more people will die per year of accidents in cars, you know much more ordinary kinds of tragedy, and that is why this is such a bad public policy. sharks in your waters aint just your sharks, there potentially everyones sharks due to the long range travel that has been found. we have so few of these creatures in the world, killing them is unjust. the sea is not meant to be mans pool, it will always have predators, and we will have more left after sharks
 
All arguments aside the catalyst for the mess we are in goes deeper. Personally I think for a large part this is linked to that taboo subject of human over population! Why no one mentions this. The sheer amount of food, shark food, removed from the Oceans on a daily basis is just mind boggling. It's now become chic to eat Sashimi and Sushi in rural country villages in English backwoods, a place where fifty years ago the thought of eating fish would have been as alien as the notion of putting a man on the moon! No one stops to think about the impact this is having on the marine species that should be yoshing that Tuna instead of the peroxide cougar clinging to the hope that her 'cosmopolitan' image will appeal to the village stud.

For the WA administration to say this is being done in the public safety is pure horse shit. A greater service to the community, if the leadership were truly concerned with the public safety, would be the banning of tobacco products. With just over 1200 tobacco related deaths in 2013 surely the ban would underline that suggested devotion to their subjects. But then again, how would they be able to replace the millions of dollars generated in Tobacco taxes?

Just sayin'
 
paulherrin said:
i think a short series or long doco about surfing and sharks and science would be a really good idea. if all these sharks are going to die, we should be capturing them for the future in the meantime to preserve them in some living form.
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He, he, Western Australians do have sense. That surf pattern on the hiding suit is just what I was thinking, except the exposed feet and hands etc I knew could cast a shadow. Good find, I like the blue one. At least they're half away there to what I thought up in a few seconds.

The shark shield is an old one. My reference to electric fields on suites is for much small electric fields that would probably be an attractant rather than a repellent. See, certain creatures, the platapus being the classic example, can hunt by sensing minute electric currents of their preys bodies. Out brains actual give off something like a six foot feels, but as that is something I remember Fri. the 80's I can't be sure. It could extend much further.
 
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Paul the WA government fund both the development of those suits and shark shield. I'm not sure if you can buy the suits yet but the shark shield surfers mostly refuse to use because they don't like the trailing line. They just got given a heap of coin to miniaturise the tech so it'll fit to a board without the need of a trailing electrode.
 
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