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Beware of the two legged land shartk
Sep. 27th, 2012 08:58 pmThere has been five deaths deemed to be caused by sharks in the last 12 months in Western Australia and the jump to save lives has lead the state government to one resolution: kill them all . Proactive culling is the current promise to protect our precious human lives. However as any West Aussie will tell you, if you don’t want to be taken by a shark, stay out of the water.
Polls in WA show between one third and three quarters of the West Australian public are against culling, it is a very 1960’s mentality that we are the owners of the land and sea. We are more enlightened in this day and age and we know we are the protectors more than owners. We have confirmed the Great whites need protection from everyone except the Department of Fisheries.
Some sharks are the top of the ocean food chain. Sharks help control not only other populations in the ocean, but assist in removing the bulk waste like the odd whale carcass floating in the sea. We have all seen the mess created when a whale carcass washes up on a beach and we try to remove the carcass with explosives . If a shark spots a whales remains floating in the ocean, the shark thinks ‘you beauty! I wont need to eat for a week!’, and the feeding frenzy begins.
There are few things a great white likes less than a human though. We are a tease to most sharks in our wetsuits that make us looks like seals. They expect to chomp on a nice fatty Pinniped and instead find themselves munching on bones. We are too crunchy for the average shark and to devour us is not energy efficient for the shark. Whereas a seal will keep a shark happy for a number of days, a great white may regurgitate a large amount of the average person as it is inedible to them. Great whites want fat. Sure throwing Clive Palmer or Gina Rinehart to the sharks may initially give them a good feed (and be a positive for society) but even they would give a great white a some indigestion.
Netting off beaches wont work because of the collateral damage, and other species shouldn’t suffer for our fear. Culling wont work because great whites are already a threatened species and we don’t want them all gone. Tagging and studying sharks is the only good thing the WA state government has put forward. Maybe one day we can find a way to live with sharks, but until they grow legs, most of us are fairly safe.
Maybe that’s the fear though, maybe the government things evolution will be haste and we will be soon fighting off sharks in our own front yards. It is not the sharks coming from the ocean that we should worry about though, it is those that already have legs that plan on culling a beautiful animal.
Save the sharks, cull the politicians.
Polls in WA show between one third and three quarters of the West Australian public are against culling, it is a very 1960’s mentality that we are the owners of the land and sea. We are more enlightened in this day and age and we know we are the protectors more than owners. We have confirmed the Great whites need protection from everyone except the Department of Fisheries.
Some sharks are the top of the ocean food chain. Sharks help control not only other populations in the ocean, but assist in removing the bulk waste like the odd whale carcass floating in the sea. We have all seen the mess created when a whale carcass washes up on a beach and we try to remove the carcass with explosives . If a shark spots a whales remains floating in the ocean, the shark thinks ‘you beauty! I wont need to eat for a week!’, and the feeding frenzy begins.
There are few things a great white likes less than a human though. We are a tease to most sharks in our wetsuits that make us looks like seals. They expect to chomp on a nice fatty Pinniped and instead find themselves munching on bones. We are too crunchy for the average shark and to devour us is not energy efficient for the shark. Whereas a seal will keep a shark happy for a number of days, a great white may regurgitate a large amount of the average person as it is inedible to them. Great whites want fat. Sure throwing Clive Palmer or Gina Rinehart to the sharks may initially give them a good feed (and be a positive for society) but even they would give a great white a some indigestion.
Netting off beaches wont work because of the collateral damage, and other species shouldn’t suffer for our fear. Culling wont work because great whites are already a threatened species and we don’t want them all gone. Tagging and studying sharks is the only good thing the WA state government has put forward. Maybe one day we can find a way to live with sharks, but until they grow legs, most of us are fairly safe.
Maybe that’s the fear though, maybe the government things evolution will be haste and we will be soon fighting off sharks in our own front yards. It is not the sharks coming from the ocean that we should worry about though, it is those that already have legs that plan on culling a beautiful animal.
Save the sharks, cull the politicians.