Great white fear prompts call to cull species

Jake Heron was preparing to catch the last wave of the day, in Port Lincoln, when the ocean's most feared predator struck without warning.

Erupting from the water beside him, the great white shark bit deep into his right arm and leg and knocked him off his surfboard.

"Terror is the only word I can think of to describe it," Heron, a 40-year-old lobster fisherman, said. "I was punching and kicking and screaming for help. I knew death was a distinct possibility."

The 4m shark was poised for another attack when a lucky wave propelled Heron and the remains of his mangled surfboard to shore. He was rushed to hospital and received more than 60 stitches.

Heron's ordeal, last month, propelled him into one of the world's most exclusive clubs - those who have been attacked by a great white and survived.

But it has also prompted an impassioned debate in Australia over whether the great white shark - Carcharodon carcharias - should be culled.

Those in favour of a cull say great whites have increased dramatically in numbers since being protected from hunting in Australian waters in the past decade. They also say the sharks are being lured closer to shore by a booming tuna fishing industry where tens of thousands of wild-caught tuna are fattened in underwater pens before being exported to Japan, where they end up as top-grade sushi and sashimi.

Critics say the raw pilchards tossed into the pens, and the blood and guts which spill into the water when the tuna are slaughtered, are an irresistible attraction for great whites.

Nowhere is the controversy more acute than in Port Lincoln, the centre of the tuna industry, on the southern tip of South Australia's rugged Eyre Peninsula.

Home to 13,000 people, it is the Antipodean equivalent of Amity Island, the fictional New England beach resort caught up in shark attack hysteria in the 1975 blockbuster Jaws.

Underwater footage of great whites used in Jaws was filmed at Dangerous Reef, a few kilometres from Port Lincoln, and the visitor centre sells great white merchandise.

Dubbed by the Australian press Shark Central, Port Lincoln is the only sizeable town along a stretch of coastline which is home to one of the world's largest populations of great whites.

The sharks, which can grow to 6m and weigh 3000kg, normally feed on fish, seals and sea lions, but will attack humans if offered the chance.

There have been five shark attacks in Australia since December, two of them fatal - significantly more than the national average of one a year.

There was another near miss last weekend when surfer Josh Berris, 26, desperately fought for his life after being attacked off the coast of South Australia's Kangaroo Island. He survived by ramming the surfboard into the shark's mouth.

"Numbers are up five to seven-fold compared with 10 years ago," said Heron, whose bite wounds are slowly healing.

"To say that the tuna industry doesn't attract sharks is an outrageous lie.

"We are teaching sharks to interact with boats and people."

Anti-shark feeling is running high in Port Lincoln's pubs and shops, and many locals back the call for a cull.

"Even though the ocean is the shark's domain, you have to look after your own," said Nick Porter, who runs a surf shop.

"To have so many attacks in such a short period of time is unheard of."

Gig Bailey, a prawn trawlerman who has lived in Port Lincoln for 40 years, said: "We've seen a lot more sharks in the last 10 years, no doubt about it. I used to swim a lot but I'm much warier now."

The tuna industry denies any suggestion that its offshore farms have increased the number of great whites. Port Lincoln's tuna "barons", who have become millionaires , say the pens act as a magnet for sharks which would be in the area anyway, rather than luring more animals from the open sea.

The debate is almost impossible to resolve because scientists have no idea whether the number of great white sharks has increased, dropped or remained the same since tuna farming began.

"From our limited observations, there's no general trend either up or down," said Barry Bruce, a government scientist and one of the country's foremost shark experts.

"You can't make any intelligent judgments about there being a link between tuna fishing and shark attacks."

Experts argue that the number of shark attacks has increased because four million Australians, a fifth of the country's population, now live in rural coastal areas.

Having secured their own little piece of paradise they spend their time swimming, surfing and sailing, presenting the great white with far more targets than before.

"The number of people with four-wheel-drives who can access remote beaches has increased dramatically," said Peter Davis, Port Lincoln's mayor and a former shark fisherman.