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

[Robert Hart]

DELETED. My internet hung and the response and an edit was duplicated. - The final update appears below.

 

[Robert Hart]

On the senate, as I understand it, all six W.A. senate positions will be recontested as the election for senate candidates was declared absolutely void in the final decision this morning.

 

[Robert Hart]

This is as way off-topic as it gets but given my reference to my old Auntie Mollie, her aerial view of large sharks in the ocean below between Rottnest Island and Cott, waiting as she imagined for airmail delivery of their next meal, here is a little clip of a live performance by Bernard Carney, a favourite son of Western Australia, be he an émigré. The song tells the story of Jimmy Woods, a larger than life character and legendary aviator. ----------------- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0432xiAgE5U --------------------

 

[Marc Thorpe]

Word is that the first Dolphin has been collected from one of the drum lines. Fisheries have been happy for all manner of sharks and sizes of sharks to be filmed, photographed etc but yesterday a small bundle was covered over and the vessel slammed out some 8Km from the shore to dispose of package X. Why the secrecy?

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Its getting on a bit to have a big impact. I think people are probably already desentising.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Bob, wasn't it a half senate election, the other senators would have years left to serve?

 

[Robert Hart]

Wayne. It was a half-senate election. It is only the W.A senate representation of the entire six seats which is to go back to the polls here.
　

The prime minister, during his campaign, threatened to go for a double-dissolution if he was elected but found he could not have his way with a hostile or hung senate. A double-dissolution as I understand it, spills the entire senate but am not sure. I somehow don't think he is going to call that bluff unless Labor, Greens, all Indies and wannabe parties get thoroughly done by a Liberal landslide over here.
　

As for energy fade-out on the protest front, there has to be a finite limit to how much any persons having to earn their daily bread can commit to a sustained heavy campaign. They also have to be mindful of over-exposure and desensitising the humble public as you have correctly pointed out.
　

Sea Shepherd Australia has an eye on the issue and their principal has visited to address the major rallies. Once the Japanese whaling fleet finishes its Antarctic season and goes home, there may be some escalation.
　

It is a vexed question and I can understand the passions of some who are for the cull even if I don't agree with it myself.
　

There's nothing to make you go faster, quite like the sound of a heavy splash then sucking sound of a whirlpool in otherwise oily still northern waters as a big shark wheels after queenfish just twenty metres from your feet.
　

It is amazing at a very personal level, just how much skin you can lacerate from your fingertips when you swim up onto dry sand because you don't want to take time standing up in the shallows to run in case it gets your feet. Then you giggle like a fool because you got away.

Then you feel like a fool because it was the wingtips of a huge manta ray sticking up and everyone watching it cruise in shallow-water mode along the beach goes "Ahhhhh." in absolute rapt fascination.

When a big northern noah keeps on coming again and again, right up onto a beach at a school swimming class like smaller reefies do, despite the local cop filling it full of lead from a confiscated high-powered rifle, then the notion of the benign great white is a bit of a harder sell. - One would hope they eventually go with the transponder idea so some of the large sharks can be monitored. I doubt they will be able to tag all of them.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

That is totally reduculpuse, that will ruin the timing of senate terms, unless they think there is some reason the past results of all senators could be in question.

Yes, I was just referring to the public's/media gateways sensitivity to developments like this.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

It is also a question, of how people respect the great white because of how awesome, big and dangerous it is, religiously. They bait and kill feral cats and dogs everyday and hardly anybody raises an eyelid. It is like wanting to respect and protect a dictator like Hitler + name most. I've tried to point out here the varying standard, we should hang back and view it at the level we view other endangered animals of that level of intelligence and their relative danger. But as I've expressed before, I'm happy to assess reasons to keep them, things to mitigate danger instead, but the last thing I would want to see is a film of emotionalist propagandada driven by obsessive real. It is life, it is our life, even to make something good in part before god, and with god.

 

[Robert Hart]

FROM WIKIPEDIA - A double dissolution is a procedure permitted under the Australian Constitution to resolve deadlocks between the House of Representatives and the Senate. If the conditions are satisfied (called a trigger), the government of the day can request the Governor-General to dissolve both houses of parliament and call a full election. If after the election the legislation is still not passed by the two houses, then a joint sitting of the two houses of parliament can be called to vote on the legislation. If the legislation is passed by the joint sitting, then the legislation is deemed to have passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
A double dissolution is the only circumstance in which the entire Senate can be dissolved. Also, as a result of all seats being contested, it is easier for smaller parties to obtain election to the Senate under the Senate proportional voting system: the quota for the election of each senator in each Australian state in a full Senate election is 7.69% (1/(12+1)), while in a normal half-Senate election the quota is 14.28% (1/(6+1)).
Similar to the United States Congress, but unlike the British and Canadian Parliaments, Australia's two parliamentary houses generally have equal legislative power. The only exception is that appropriation (money) bills must originate in the House of Representatives and cannot be amended by the Senate (although they may be rejected outright). With the Senate having more or less equal power, governments, which are formed in the House of Representatives, can be seriously frustrated by Senate majorities determined to reject their legislation. This can be the case even when a government has a very strong majority in the House of Representatives.
Malcolm Fraser is the only Prime Minister to have advised two double dissolutions (1975 and 1983), and Sir Ninian Stephen is the only Governor-General to have approved two double dissolutions

 

[Robert Hart]

I think Trevor's notion of a documentary, if my recall is correct from previous posts, is for a balanced documentary to put the history and both current cases. To credit the organisors, suggestion was made beforehand to tone down some of the placards and to appropriately behave for the last rally and the admission to the public gallery for question time. I blew it with a lot of my SI2K footage. I used an IRND and Ultracon to replicate the Epic look but totally forgot the old ENG lens I was using, unlike the S16 primes, is sweetest at about f8-f11 and about as sharp as a bag of cottonwool at f3.5 or wider. Old camera dogs sometimes take a bit longer to train.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

I just commenting on the sorts of sentiments going around I the industry, I mean movement, and echoes here (as well as things like the nature documentary thing instead, which usually has religious awe overtones to them).

I thought you were referring just to all the WA state senators being up for re-election from the court decision Robert.

Saw WA 7:30 report last night, that included a section on culling. You poor guys, the insight into WA politics and vibe I got was disconcerting, plus you all talk and look strange over there . In Qld politics we have a sort of roll in the way words are said and bombardment of words, not too unlike you here in federal politics but a bit different. However, harder to read people here.

They mentioned a tiger shark taking somebody in WA, and only one shark death in Queensland (presumably beaches) since the drum lines were pit in in 1962. The minister said they didn't want to use nets because of the bi-catch. The presenter thought it was very bad no great whites were caught, but the Minister thought it was a great success because of the large tiger sharks caught, and the single victim (remains found inside, but that doesn't mean a person was necessarily killed first by that shark, and it didn't scavenge body parts). He also said it was the wrong time of year to catch great whites (presumably because by the time the decision was carried. through the great white season was over). They continue to explore alternatives like shark shield, and have ragged and are tracking over 140 sharks. Something like that.

 

[Trevor Emmerson]

One of the greens senators had the EPA answer questions today on the conditions of the exemption. She inquired why it was a review or revocation hadn't been triggered subject to the clause which states that small sharks and other bycatch would not be caught because of the larger hooks. Stating that upward of 90 sharks had been caught to date the majority of which being undersize.

The answer given by the EPA was that so far no GWS have been caught of size or undersize. The 90 sharks caught so far are all of a species that have no protected status, therefore they don't have a problem with it. I think this is something that I and many others- Members of parliament included- apparently had the wrong idea on. Though not implicitly stated, as long as the WA government aren't catching significant numbers of undersize great whites all other shark bycatch does not trigger a review. They could catch 1000 undersize tiger sharks and kill them all presumably and have no case to answer to the EPA. So there goes that idea. EPA are not going to step in and close the cull.

 

[Robert Hart]

It is just about the W.A. senator seats. With the extra info, I just thought the cousins would like a bit more general info on our senate. We all talk and look strange over here?? - Given the number of eastern staters who have come over for the jobs, I thought we would have been a bit more of a hybridised homogenous lot by now. I guess the hard skies and sun makes us squint and the bush-flies and lip-pincering of rolley cigarettes which made us talk with our mouths shut may have become entrenched as a accent. Strange things have happened to our accent over time. We had a sort of genteel Aussie accent on the southwest coast and some regional accents. Around the Eastern Goldfields it was a bit Queenslander. Broome-talk was a local northern accent influenced by the asian divers and aboriginal accents. You could pick anyone who was brought up there. Locally near the city, we were sort of Aussie genteel. Then around the seventies there seemed to be a bit of pommie workin' class speak among some of the teens for a while and it was still around in the eighties in patches. Then US gangsta-talk among some of the teens began to take hold. Nowadays, there is to my ears a distinctly softer accent, devoid of much of the sharp consonants and sibs, similar to an accent generated by mid to high frequency hearing loss, and the sounds you don't hear in 32K to 48K digital audio. - With people overdriving their I-pods and wrecking their hearing, this is to be expected. In extremity, examples might be "khleep" for "sleep" and "brooflee" for "Bruce Lee". I know it is a nightmare to record. Deficiencies in digital audio are actually being aggravated by digital and I-pod modified speech. I just know I am going to get a searing over this assessment from somebody. - This is straying miles away from the debate on the "tharffs", so I should belay my disrtraction from this point on. - As for local politics, you had your turn with Joh Bjelke-Peterson. I guess its ours now. --- As for the sharks, the Fisheries and Wildlife guys will go on hating what they are being made to do and the contract fisho near Margaret River will continue to make some cash out of it.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

It is just about the W.A. senator seats. With the extra info, I just thought the cousins would like a bit more general info on our senate. We all talk and look strange over here?? - Given the number of eastern staters who have come over for the jobs, I thought we would have been a bit more of a hybridised homogenous lot by now. I guess the hard skies and sun makes us squint and the bush-flies and lip-pincering of rolley cigarettes which made us talk with our mouths shut may have become entrenched as a accent.

Ohh, so you saw the 7:30 Report aswell!

As for local politics, you had your turn with Joh Bjelke-Peterson. I guess its ours now.

A most brilliant man, spoke to him once. For some reason he mixed up my name with Bruce. But I think it is true, he was getting on a bit and that was really going on. It's one thing in politics, just because you're the leader doesn't mean the sharks can't play, and that you can do much about them, in the end you might be the duck sitting in the water. Met Pauline as well and Bill O'Chee, and I feel sorry for them, people get betrayed from honest intentions and caught up in politics. I think it is a shame that she got swamped by sharks who emphasised with her over demonization. Prime Minister Howard had the right political idea, he knew if they all ignored her not much would come out of it, but some had axes to grind, and this attracted real extremities to try to use it for their own means, having it been burnt to their image. Dangerous, stuff, once you get extreme elements being attracted into a benign setup to try to use it for their own ends. We have enough of that with the normal parties who can desperately try to control them. As for Bill, I came up here saw his election posters and my jaw dropped. Shame, a very promising young man. Another impressive young man I came across was Beatty at my grandmother's house when I was a kid. His family were neighbours. Funny, I always wanted to meet BA Santamaria(?) when I was younger, only to find out in recent years he came up to my town every year for holidays and used to hold meetings in the hall (I used to wonder why my friend's father objected to his program so personally). Probably walked past him in the street and didn't recognize him (re-edit: reading this I just remembered I think I did see him in the street) like with Billy G (kicking myself that actually could have been good business for both of us). Oh yes, my local member is Bob Katter. I think not getting to meet and talk with BA was a bigger loss. He was insightful like me, don't know how right he was I was too young when his current affairs analysis report program used to come on before the news. See guys, you can go around all the demonstrations meet all the overly excited. and learn a lot of bad habits, but getting to meet the really intelligent voices of reason you get to learn, just avoid the bad habits. Bob Brown is a real political performer, if he was running the anti shark cull campaign personally it would be another thing. He was on the news today as chairman of sea shepherd, talking about the whaling cull in the Antarctic sanctuary. He calmly/authoritively stated the evidence of whale parts found in the sanctuary, then calmly declared the bad thing as disgraceful or something like that, with that he had calmly nailed them leaving them covered with a big pile of ...... Good politics, good sort of interview style. He is one person with savy and respect I would be worried running against in an election. It is not all the big blustery ones you need to worry about, it is the calm little savy ones. These things are the same in film, even a comedian often has a straight man at least. who can hold many laughs while doing very little.

As for the sharks, the Fisheries and Wildlife guys will go on hating what they are being made to do and the contract fisho near Margaret River will continue to make some cash out of it.

 

[Chelsea Wagner]

Wow I haven't chimed in on this in a long time. At least pages ago. So though belated I wanted to follow up on a few things. First Chelsea is a girls name. But thanks for the guy what was surprised to a girl cued in.

So GW's in so cal are juveniles. Juveniles eat fish. So swimming in So cal is not that dangerous. It is theorized that the reason that sharks are larger here is that they eat a much higher fatty diet. (I think that is why there are so many fat people in the USA, but that story has been told ;-) The high fat diet comes from eating the blubber off seals. It has been noted that they will only eat the fat off a large male leaving the rest to sink. I have seen similar GW bite marks in whales. And when they bite a Sea Otter they bite and spit it out, no fat; er surfers as well. (Though I think it is because they do not like the taste of neoprene, but that's just my opinion.) Aussie there is not the Seal population we have and as larger GW's don't eat fish they eat mammals. So less food less fat and well less discriminate feeding.

As for the buoyancy and long range the whites out here travel all over up and down the coast moving from seal hang to seal hang out. Easy 1600 miles for some. Water temp was thought to have a factor but they travel across a range of temps, so that theory went out the window. It all seems to boil down to having lots of nice slippery seals to chomp on all over the place. I know that the insides of one shark had a blue shark in it along with parts of three seals.

As for the culling of GW's is there a culling on seals as well?

As the say if you don't want to get eaten don't go in the water. Or is that like some guys when it comes to using condoms. Just dive in anyway. LOL

Cheers. You need to get the Sea Shepard guys there... met them at sea once.... Flak Jackets and everything on...

 

[Marc Thorpe]

You need to get the Sea Shepard guys there... met them at sea once.... Flak Jackets and everything on...

You jumped the gun, they're taking the issue up with court proceedings against the cull: From WA Today

Cheers,
M

 

[Trevor Emmerson]

After the EPA received a record 12000+ submissions from the public calling for a review of the GWS protection exemption and days later informed Greens senators it was not in fact required to consider the high number of undersize sharks being taken as they were non-protected tiger sharks not GWS, today we have another development. The mother of an attack victim, in conjunction with Sea Shepard Australia are suing the West Australian Government in the supreme court. Their case seems to be based around a view that it was in fact unlawful for the Government and the EPA to bypass the protected status of the sharks to have the cull. The case is being heard next week. Should be interesting.

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/s...action-against-shark-cull-20140226-33hfx.html

 

[Trevor Emmerson]

Beat me to it Mark

 

[Chelsea Wagner]

And in response to a question about the BBC and me. And no alas I was doing shark research for USCS, NOAA and Palagic. Limited UW at that time, back in the pre red days...