Rpela

Or we can just agree on the most effective solution - a cull.

I guess I am part of that small vocal group in the south west that so annoyed clown Kelly. Awesome.

We demanded alot more than just SDLs. We wanted effective warning systems and the timely removal of dangerous sharks and whale carcasses to name a few but we kept hitting the lack of "scientific evidence" brick wall that Kelly hid behind.

Without an effective tagging program in WA he and others can continue to hide behind it. The boat based tagging program was all but stopped to help with this charade. Politics at it's worst.

The SDL program if it ever gets off the ground properly is one way to stop the lack of scientific evidence hidey games they want to play.

Over time it would show with some scientific rigour how many sharks we are dealing with, how rapidly the population is growing and if they are transitory or territorial in our waters.ie the same info nsw is furiously gathering.

The political football that this has become would largely stop with hard scientific evidence. Eg if the tagging when matched up to the DNA sampling showed what we already know anecdotally ie that we have a rapidly recovering population of maturing GWS then INACTION would become impossible to defend.

That said I fully expect Kelly to can this trial the first chance he gets. They don't want the truth on this as it is problematic for where they are now wedged between libs and the greens on this issue.

Yeah things have gone a bit quiet politically but that's basically down to a lack of recent attacks after the pressure release of agreeing to the SDL trial. There have been quite a few close calls but so far we have been lucky.

Its absolutely sickening but the next few innocent deaths are what it will take to push this back into the uncomfortable area for Kelly and Mcclowan again. If the attacks are in the labor heartland city seats rather than the lib held south west then even more so.

The politics on this just makes me sick.

Hey JB, how long have you been surfing? Your last comment makes me wonder, did you start surfing when your daughter showed an interest or something. Not putting you down mate, I reckon your an alright bloke and I also agree with some of the points you have echoed. Even guys I've admired like Tom Carrol have your kind of outlook in regard to sharks & I found myself debating him on his brother Nicks Eastern state online disscussion a couple of years ago after the Ballina revolt.

I ask because most people around my age (47) who have surfed about 35 years know what it was like to go surfing rarely even thinking about the possibility of sharks yet alone having to evacuate the water because of them. I grew up in Perth, before moving to Margs at 22. Living there till I was 27 & heading East across the Nullabor surfing South Oz spots notorious for being sharky. Through this time, about 17 years of regular time in the water, I...nor anyone I knew personally had felt the need to evacuate the ocean due to the presence of a shark of any description. Mind you by this time Whaling had ended about 20 years earlier & the protection of great whites began a year later.

The first time I was ever confronted with the thought was when a bloke informed me paddling from Cactus main break to Caves was a really bad idea coz there is a breeding ground between. That was 22 years ago. Not much happened after that until I started to notice how the frequency of shark attacks escalated.

Now every year...with increasing frequency I have had to vacate the water. Not because an App has started beeping or something. But because a shark has actually been sighted in immediate proximity to our location.

Great whites were originally protected based on the decreased observations of fisherman, not someone with some BS degree declaring them to have more than less than a clue. Fishermen, surfers and plenty of other people have noticed the increasing number of sharks, its way past the time to reconsider our actions based upon the same civil observation.

The problem these days is the propaganda that has been put forward to protect these creatures over all others, including humans in most cases and this needs to change. The current measures are nothing less than a time bomb, no amount of wasted tax $ on government back patting advertising will make a change other than effective strategies to provide safety to our people. To our children.

JB, fark science mate. The evidence is right there in front of us, we can see it with our own eyes far too frequently for my liking. We should be far more concerned about plastics finding their way into the ocean than protecting problem sharks.

No science in numbers of whites up and down the coast?
therefore can we assume they are plentiful and remove them from the protected list?
agree with mickpc prior to Ken crew sharks were not even thought of as a worry. Would regularly surf cathedrals on rotto at sun down or big rock down south without a care in the world. No way I would do that now even with a zapper in my board

If anyone's interested I could come up with a long and complicated mathematical formula to prove the surf is less crowded today than 20 years ago

the irony in all this is it took basically anecdotal evidence only to place the great white on the endangered list but it will take a decade or three of scientific studies to take it off again.

Not sure who is going to fund those studies though. certainly not WA labor.

CULL!

No one can be bothered with arguing with dum**** JB, thats why no further comments on CULL!!!!

Another four pages dedicated to sharks

just got back from Reunion island and caught up with Johanne Defay great chick who rips !!
and installed Rpela housings in her local quiver

Theirs also footage of Jorgann Couzinet a pro surfer from Reunion popping some big air and rotianons with that you can clearly see his Rpela fitted. Im not sure how to share that video though sorry..

^^ hey Katana, Did you hang some chum off the back of boards to attract some sharks over there testing?? Or is that just WA practice??

Why then is there articals in the media stating otherwise, eg Salisbury Island, Esperance.
Repela hung bait off the back of boards to attract a shark bite.