Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to CNN, Climate Change is making sharks more desperate by destroying the ecosystems which feed them, leading to a surge in fatal shark attacks on humans.
Sharks have killed 7 people in Australia this year, the most since 1934. Climate change could be a factor
By Jessie Yeung, CNN
Updated 0910 GMT (1710 HKT) October 19, 2020
(CNN) One morning in early October, a now-familiar scene unfolded on a beach in Western Australia.
A shark had attacked a surfer, who was missing. Authorities sent drones into the sky for aerial surveillance, emergency workers jumped onto boats to scour the area, and medics waited on shore.
Days of searching uncovered the man’s surfboard, but his body was never found. He was counted as Australia’s seventh shark attack victim this year — an alarming spike that hasn’t been seen in the country for 86 years.
…
There are a number of possible explanations — several experts have pointed out that year-by-year figures always fluctuate, and this could be simple bad luck. But there’s another possible culprit: the climate crisis.
As oceans heat up, entire ecosystems are being destroyed and forced to adapt. Fish are migrating where they’ve never gone before. Species’ behaviors are changing. And, as the marine world transforms, sharks are following their prey and moving closer to shores popular with humans.
…
Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/18/australia/australia-shark-attacks-climate-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html
One possible solution might be to thin their numbers are bit. But shark culls are becoming increasingly difficult to organise; Australia’s greens frequently agitate against culling sharks.
Why Sharks Should Not Be Culled to Protect Surfers
Senator tells parliament why sharks should not be culled
Last month Tasmanian Greens senator Peter Whish Wilson, who is an avid surfer, used a speech in parliament to advocate against the culling of sharks as a knee-jerk response to the recent attacks on the north coast.
Mr Whish Wilson described his position as unique one, given he is ‘one who wants to save the creatures who are potentially out to eat him’. We publish his speech here as a contribution to the debate.
…
I have thought often and deeply on this issue. My conclusions are that the two most important things for a surfer like me are: firstly, understand the risks involved with surfing; and, secondly, only go in the water if you accept the risks. You may still be and are likely to be uncomfortable with the acceptance of these risks—sharks are always on my mind when I am in the water—but it must be your choice. As I just noted, the good news for ocean lovers is the risks of unwanted shark encounters are statistically very low and can be mitigated to some extent. But by any statistical measure death by shark y majority of modern humans.
…
Read more: https://www.echo.net.au/2015/09/senator-tells-parliament-why-sharks-should-not-be-culled/
Does culling make a difference? I think its likely they might. Although sharks are free to roam the entire ocean, the reality is much of the ocean is a desert in terms of life. Ocean activity tends to concentrate in nutrient rich areas like coastal fringes, so sharks culled from a region will not necessarily be immediately replaced from an adjacent region.
Culling likely would make our beaches safer – if the culling programme is maintained.
As for the climate argument, in my opinion arguing that climate change is making sharks more ferocious because they are running out of food strengthens the case for culling. Put the starving sharks out of their misery – better for the sharks, better for humans who want to use the beaches.
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Of course the most dishonest fear mongering news media would suggest a climate crisis. The ignore the data that refutes CNN BS that shows sharks are increasing suggesting their ecosystem is improving
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/white-shark-populations-are-growing-here-s-why-s-good-news/
Nothing like a bet both ways I guess. In the article it refers to the waters heating up and destroying ECO Systems, changing feeding habits. In the linked local Australian article about a recent close encounter, other “Scientists” are referred to as blaming cooling waters.
“Some scientists believe cooler ocean temperatures could be changing where sharks search for prey”
https://www.9news.com.au/national/shark-close-encounter-fisherman-films-giant-great-white-off-nsw-coast/2c11cf30-c39f-434f-80bd-6df0fba681b3
Nothing to do with their now being about 8 billion people on the planet, many of them messing about in the sea and a rabid sensationlist new media ready to spray any incident all around the world instantly. Sure, much more likely to be a convoluted inteweaved fantasy of made up knowledge of climate change and predator food chains globally.
I have the chart….ice cream sales at the beach and those shark attacks match perfectly so global warming is innocent…this time.
Goodness.
So shark attacks cause ice cream sales to rocket, do they?
Must be comfort eating!
Auto
By the sharks.
By the folks.
Whatever – it’s worse than we thought!
“firstly, understand the risks involved with
surfingliving surrounded by forests; and, secondly, only go inthe watera home in the middle of forest if you accept the risks.”CNN: Nothing but the Best.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/jeffrey-toobin-return-cnn-masturbation-scandal-insiders
“firstly, understand the risks involved with
surfingdoing virtual meetings; and, secondly, onlygo in the waterdo virtual meetings if you accept the risks”So….nothing to do with the increase in Surfers in the water then? Crap News Nightly living up to expectations as usual.
Ive heard there is a correlation between ice cream sales and shark attacks. The higher the ice cream sales the more shark attacks. We need to create an international organization to work on this. We need an international agreement to phase out ice cream and replace it with hot soup.
I object to culling sharks.
The reason is that the people in China who can afford luxury food items, such as shark fin soup, do not know or care that the sharks who are the victims of this bottomless pit the Chinese have for an appetite. They are definned on the boats that catch them and the fins are kept but the shark (still alive, BTW) is simply thrown back into the ocean with no way to maneuver or survive. (If you think I’m kidding, I’m not. Look it up.)
Since the {PRC Chinese generally think with their stomachs, it is no surprise. I don’t have any fossilized shark coprolites, but they look like springs for a really big truck rig.
It is also no surprise that sharks of many (not necessarily all) species are increasing in numbers and appearing in waters that they used to avoid. They’re simply trying to avoid being turned into fish food by the Chinese.
Pity the poor sharks. Throw them a tuekwy leg or two, willya? SHARKS’ LIVES MATTER!!!!!
I’m right there with you on this one Sara. In regard to food in general, the ordinary folk in China waste nothing. If it won’t kill you, they will eat it. Shark fin soup is an in your face way of wealthy Chinese saying that the fins of a shark are a delicacy, and or serve medical purposes. Or it could be an aphrodisiac, the point is that they only make use of the fins indicates that they are wealthy. Sadly for the sharks, there are many more wealthy Chinese today.
Have you ever eaten shark? Freshly cooked, pan fried shark with fresh lemon and parsley is excellent. People are going hungry and they are throwing away food. To think that they cut the fins off live sharks and toss the poor creatures back into the ocean is nothing short of criminal. More room on the boats for fins if you toss the rest of the creature overboard. Of course I would much prefer that animals weren’t murdered at all! There are a number of animals on the brink of extinction due to Chinese superstition, medicinal or aphrodisiac.
Getting back to shark attacks in Australia and climate change. I cannot believe the extent that people will go to to make these claims!
The Greens have indeed reduced netting and other forms of shark deterrence. That’s a tricky one to argue with, whales, dolphins and turtles are frequently caught in the nets and lose their lives.
So there is often little to stop a shark from coming close to shore. There is a larger human population today, and tourists love our beautiful beaches. So casualties are inevitable.
But the reason that seven people have been attacked by sharks this year has nothing to do with climate change. Nah…It’s because of the Wuhan virus. Yep, blame it on Covid-19.
Our Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been so generous with welfare payments that the farmers and fruit growers are destroying produce because they can’t find enough workers for harvest. That’s right, these welfare recipients are receiving enough from welfare payments that they don’t need to work, so they’re going to the beach….cue the music from jaws.
Brilliant – Lets pay the idle feckless useless bastards a supplement for every hour they play in 4 feet of sea water and more, monitored via their new GPS tracker bracelets and corona masks they will be queuing to sign up for, and let the great whites do the rest. Hopefully the sodden masks will drown those the great whites miss.
Brilliant – Lets pay the idle feckless useless sods a supplement for every hour they play in 4 feet of sea water and more, monitored via their new GPS tracker bracelets and corona masks they will be queuing to sign up for, and let the great whites do the rest. Hopefully the sodden masks will drown those the great whites miss.
Mods I responded to Sara ages ago and my response went to moderation for some reason. There was nothing offensive in my comment either to Sara or to anyone else. Can you give me a reason for it to be rejected?
[Who can say why the gods of WordPress – may their blessings be upon us – choose some comments for glory and others for despair. We humble priests of the Order Moderatus, only serve, and do not question the reasons for their decisions. Your petitions were heard, however, and your comment rescued from the Pit of
DamnationModeration. And having thus been ministered to, and returned to the light, may it prosper in its renewed mission of illumination. -mod]Praise to the almighty mods.
Bottomless pit?
Chinese diet is as varied and less discriminate as it is because there was never enough of the foods you had for them to eat. If they had the choices we had in the 19th and 20th century, and not the mass near starvation existence they experienced by the 100s of millions, they may well prefer nice steak and Cod and Tuna and the rest.
You people I swear, know nothing, moralise about everything
Mark, it’s not a matter of poor Chinese consuming almost every part of an animal. That shows respect for the nourishment the animal provided them.
Wealthy Chinese have grown in number, they have more billionaires than any other nation. The same applies with the growth of middle class. If there is something they desire, the cost, financial or otherwise is irrelevant.
There are parts of animals, and some of these animals now rare, that the Chinese still regard as aphrodisiacs. They hold on to superstitions that particular parts of animals have medical value. Animals across the globe are poached to harvest the desired parts. The animal is killed and left to rot. They have no respect for the animal, or whether it might be facing extinction.
The Chinese population is growing, there are animals facing extinction due to mindless slaughter. All for these people to show status and wealth. This is not sustainable.
How does this fit in with your criticism Mark?
The only thing I do appreciate about the bottomless pits that mainland Chinese people have for stomachs is that Asian carp fishing in this country is doing well, because the Chinese like to eat them, and make fish balls out of them, among other thngs. It does two things: produces money from exporting those overgrown aquarium denizens (sold here in pet stores), and rids our inland waters, including the Mississippi River and its tributaries of a foreign pest fish that crowds out the native catfish, trout, bluegills, crappies and bass (among other species).
This is _C_lickbait _N_ot _N_ews. If you don’t click on this story title 500K times, Wolfe Blitzen will die cold and lonely in his little cage. It will be your fault. Honest. Who ya gonna believe-ah, me or-ah you own-ah eyes?
How about we just call the surfers and swimmers? After all, too many humans is the root cause of everything, isn’t it?
The CNN story is too amusing to not make comment.
I maintain a website on Australian climate change and another on the surge in great white shark fatalities in Western Australia over the past 25 years.
The CNN story seems to reason that great whites, which acquire a preference for mammal meat after puberty, are being starved by climate change while all the other more abundant shark species don’t have a problem finding a fish meal.
Visit http://www.washarkattacks.net if you’re interested in why great white fatalities are increasing. The probable reason might make you uncomfortable because it’s another more popular ocean creature whose population has been booming during climate change.
It isn’t just what you have on your link I commented above just google Alf Dean and Vic Hislop if you want more reasons. There were groups of shark hunters in the 1950’s and 1970’s who basically hunted every large shark in Australia that existed. They had a network in the fishing community that used to contact these people on any siting of a large shark. By late 1980 it was extremely rare to see any large shark around Australia.
That shark is saying “you can’t fix stupid”.
No mention in her story that Great Whites, Hammerheads and others have been protected in Australian waters for over 20 years now, or the effect that has had.
Yes and the crocodiles protected in 1974 don’t appear to be eating the sharks either. In the late 50s and early 60s as kids we’d be swimming and making tin canoes for the Darwin beaches but nowadays you’d have to check there’s not a croc straying into your backyard pool. Global warmening is causing more croc attacks too folks.
Sharks feed on seals.
Humans in wet suits look like seals from below.
As the famous line goes:
“You go in the water,
Shark is in the water,
Farewell and adieu my fair Spanish ladies….”
Wow.
CNN lecturing Australia based on invented associations? Get your hand off it, mate.
Shark attacks are so uncommon – although oddly, for Australian’s under 40 a statistical more likely cause of death than COVID – that you can do anything with the numbers.
Taking Western Australia as our study piece we can see that there have been 12 fatal shark attacks since 2011. However if you graph the trend we can also see that within about 6 years the deaths would have not long dropped to zero, but have gone negative, resulting in fully formed humans being spontaneously generated from the surf.
Don’t laugh. It comes from The Models!
Face it, CNN have nothing to work with here and are probably only publishing this dross to try and get Greta to friend them on Facebook.
This sparked much confusion today at the Chinese and Russian news agencies. They did not know if this was American humor or further signs of decline in American science and education. So they ended up filing it away in the ‘weird Al Gore does tabloid news again’ before moving on to the next one.
In California gill net fishing ban is a part of an abundance of young Great White Sharks. They are abundant and compete for food around the Coronado Isles, and their is a nice Seal Lunch Cafe at the Children’s Pool in La Jolla. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/27/california-bans-giant-ocean-fishing-nets-blamed-for-killing-sea-turtles-whales/
Historically they largely avoided SoCal. No Longer.
As a very avid sea kayaker in a location which is a Great White nursery I totally agree with one of the things mentioned in the article.
When you go into their domain you accept the risk. I venture into nature expressly because it is wild. Our group manages the risks as much as we can but at the end of the day we accept that we cannot control everything and the benefits of paddling on the ocean are simply too alluring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BVE8IQcXXM
Don’t sanitise the wilderness which is far less risky than driving a car along the road. You don’t have to go into the water if you don’t want too.
Most shark attacks since 1934? When the planet was in another warm cycle. The Dust Bowl, etc.
On a serious note, the data on Shark attacks for this year will be of interest as the tourist industry has been destroyed due to the reaction to SARS Cov-2, so there will have been fewer people in the sea that are unfamiliar with nature.
This does assume that the data is clean and hasn’t been tampered with.
I think we need to take this seriously- I for one still remember the ‘night of the dolphins’ episode of the Simpsons….it could happen you know, if the sea creatures get desperate enough, and IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!!
What species are there sharks, Climatis alarmist?
As related by a skipper who has experienced marine life for the past 35 years in Western Australia, the overfishing by factory ships in international waters has led to the migration of big sharks closer to the coast to follow the food chain. No coincidence that shark attacks have increased close to shore.