West Australia\u2019s great white shark population has been dramatically underestimated for decades, contributing to flawed management of shark mitigation strategies and a rise in fatal attacks, according to the State\u2019s former chief fisheries scientist.<\/p>\n
Jim Penn, a retired fisheries scientist with more than 40 years of experience in stock assessment in WA and overseas, is calling for an independent reassessment of the white shark population \u2014 including its size and long-term trends \u2014 to ensure mitigation strategies are based on accurate data.<\/p>\n
Since white sharks were given full Federal protection in 1997, Dr Penn believes the population has increased, but he can only estimate by how much.<\/p>\n
Sign up to The Nightly’s newsletters.<\/p>\n
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n
By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n A 2018 CSIRO assessment estimated 750 adult white sharks on Australia\u2019s east coast, or about 5460 including juveniles. The southern-west stock had 1500 adults and, assuming a similar adult-to-juvenile ratio, could number about 10,000.<\/p>\n Following three fatal shark attacks in WA this year, and the possible 10,000 great white sharks lurking off the coast, would you support a cull? Vote below<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Australia\u2019s great white shark population has been dramatically underestimated for decades, contributing to flawed management of shark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44,3439],"class_list":["post-918259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news","tag-western-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918259","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=918259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}