Why shark nets might not return to Sydney’s beaches next summer
What they do is indiscriminately catch sharks and other animals that inadvertently swim into them, killing them in most circumstances, especially when it is a sea mammal or reptile that needs to surface to breathe.
Duncan Heuer, who for several years has been raising awareness in the community about the ineffectiveness of shark nets and the high bycatch, has republished news reports from the 1930s showing the nets were intended to reduce the numbers of sharks every season and “rid the ocean of sharks” over time.
The current advice provided by the Department to councils is that the mesh nets “serve as a deterrent, not a complete barrier” and are “considered controversial due to concerns about their impact on marine life”.
These days there is far more effective technology to detect and deter sharks than mesh nets.
SMART drumlines are used up and down the coast – there are 305 deployed daily, depending on the weather, in 19 local government areas. “SMART” stands for “Shark-Management-Alert-In-Real-Time” and the idea is that the sharks are intercepted, relocated by a boat and then tagged and released.
There are also tagged shark listening stations – between one and four in every NSW coastal council – and drones operated by Surf Life Saving NSW up and down the coast.
From 2014-15 to 2023-24 there were 3825 animals caught in mesh nets across Greater Sydney, department figures show. Of those, only 315 were target sharks and 3510 were non-target animals. Less than half survived.
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Meanwhile, from 2022-23 to 2023-24 there were 915 target sharks caught by SMART drumlines and 756 non-target animals, but the vast majority survived and were released alive.
As The Sydney Morning Herald has previously reported, this includes critically endangered grey nurse sharks.
Most coastal councils were already opposed to shark nets, including Waverley, Northern Beaches, Central Coast and Wollongong (Randwick’s position is unclear).
But in a sign of the shifting politics, Sutherland Shire Council has changed its tune. The council overwhelmingly voted against removing mesh nets in 2023, but in December 2024 it voted unanimously to recommend their removal.
There were some new councillors along with incumbent members who changed their minds after being shown the Department’s briefing pack and hearing speeches from Valerie Taylor, the conservationist who filmed part of Jaws, and a representative from the Humane Society International.
New councillor Kal Danznig, who has campaigned hard on the issue and worked to educate his fellow councillors, says it was hard to ignore the evidence for how SMART drumlines were so much more effective than nets.
Heuer says the politics are changing because more and more people are wising up to what shark nets can and can’t do, and the damage they inflict on marine ecosystems.
A shift backed up by the Department’s own survey of the general public in the 2022-23 summer, which found that between 20-40 per cent of people, from a representative sample, were dissatisfied or strongly dissatisfied with traditional shark nets.
