Australia's Shark Fears: A Primal Anxiety Rooted in History
A recent spate of shark bites in Australia has reignited calls for shark culls, but experts say the real issue is not the sharks themselves, but the fear they evoke in the public.
Sharks have long been a source of fascination and fear for Australians, with a rich history of depictions in rock art and early European accounts. Despite the fact that many more people drown at the beach each year than are killed by sharks, the primal fear of these creatures continues to grip the nation.
## A History of Shark Fears
Archaeological evidence suggests that sharks have been a part of Australian folklore for tens of thousands of years. The Murujuga rock art site in Western Australia features depictions of hammerhead and tiger sharks, while engravings on the cliffs overlooking a First Nations fishing spot near Sydney's Bondi beach also depict shark motifs.
Early European settlers were also struck by the presence of sharks in Australian waters. William Dampier gave the name Sharks Bay to a part of the west coast in 1699 after being struck by their "abundance", while officer Watkin Tench noted "sharks of a monstrous size" in Sydney Harbour when the First Fleet arrived in 1788.
## A Cycle of Fear and Panic
Throughout Australian history, shark incidents have sparked widespread fear and panic, often leading to calls for drastic measures such as shark culls. A spate of shark incidents in the 1920s, for example, led to the establishment of the NSW Shark Menace Advisory Committee, which recommended the "systematic meshing" of the city's beaches with steel cables and nets.
Other proposals suggested shark baiting and bombing, giant curtains of bubbles, concrete barriers, or electric fences, but each was rejected for being impractical or untested. By the mid-1930s, however, after further attacks in Sydney, the principal recommendation was for the "systematic meshing" of the city's beaches.
## The Consequences of Shark Mitigation
While shark mitigation measures were initially seen as a way to ensure public safety, they have since been shown to have unintended consequences. Scientists have pointed out the importance of apex predators such as sharks as keystone species, critical to the health of marine ecosystems, yet several are critically endangered.
As more research was conducted, the language around our interactions with sharks also changed, from shark "attacks" to "incidents". Meanwhile, public responses to recent shark encounters show how that shift towards conservation can be unsettled by fear.
| Measure | Year | | --- | --- | | Steel cables and nets in Coogee | 1935 | | Swimming nets in Sydney, Port Phillip Bay, and Perth | 1930s | | Systematic meshing of beaches in Sydney | 1930s | | Beach nets and baited drum lines in Queensland | 1960s |
## The Tension Between Science and Fear
Politicians now find themselves weighing up scientific evidence and public safety, but in the absence of robust data that tension will only continue. As Anna Clark, a professor of history at the University of Technology Sydney, notes, the real issue is not the sharks themselves, but the fear they evoke in the public.
