Third person killed by sharks in WA this year<\/a><\/p>\nThe often-heated debate over how to protect beachgoers from sharks is likely to get hotter after the death of a third person this year.<\/p>\n
But this year, it is due to be installed a couple of weeks early \u2014 on Wednesday, depending on weather conditions and seaweed movement.<\/p>\n
Mr McGurk said PodSquad members would initially swim within the enclosure when members returned to their morning routine, and they would like to see the enclosure installed early again next year.<\/p>\n
The group also called for an expansion of the shark tagging program and for investment in AI-powered drones that are capable of identifying shark species when the animals come in close to shore.<\/p>\n
He said that could enhance the data available to swimmers when they were making decisions about whether to get into the water.<\/p>\n
“We just want to know where the sharks are, and when we know where the sharks are we can keep safe,” he said.<\/p>\n
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Cottesloe volunteer surf lifesavers did the first patrol of the season on Saturday morning. (ABC News: Mya Kordic)<\/p>\n
Sharks could linger for weeks<\/p>\n
Curt Jenner from the Centre for Whale Research in Western Australia said while the whale carcass had been removed from City Beach, sharks could still be attracted to the area for weeks.<\/p>\n
“Whales are full of blubber and that blubber will break down into oil very quickly and that gets straight into the sand,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Sharks are cued in, on a molecular level, to detect small traces of oils or blood or anything like that and so they’ll be tasting that for weeks to come.”<\/p>\n
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Centre for Whale Research director Curt Jenner says traces of the whale will attract sharks to the area for some time. (ABC News: Mya Kordic)<\/p>\n
Mr Jenner said sharks were also attracted to the south-west coastline between September and December because that time was the peak of the southern migration for humpback whales.<\/p>\n
The predators also follow other prey, such as blue fin tuna, into the southern ocean.<\/p>\n
“If you were going to be cautious about being in the water, this is the time,” Mr Jenner said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of Perth’s most seasoned swimmers are taking a break from the ocean after a whale carcass lured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,17713,44,17174,17173,86,14322,482588,1042,2876,15997,45,93254,50204],"class_list":["post-915065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beach","tag-news","tag-news-perth","tag-news-wa","tag-perth-news","tag-shark-attack","tag-shark-warnings","tag-sharks","tag-summer","tag-swimming","tag-wa-news","tag-whale-carcass","tag-whale-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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