{"id":513097,"date":"2026-06-22T19:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T19:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/513097\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T19:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T19:28:09","slug":"a-spate-of-shark-bites-has-australian-ocean-lovers-on-edge-people-want-to-know-why-theyre-rising-sharks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/513097\/","title":{"rendered":"A spate of shark bites has Australian ocean lovers on edge. People want to know why they\u2019re rising | Sharks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rob Harcourt is heading back from a \u201cbeautiful surf\u201d at Bondi on a warm and sunny winter\u2019s morning in Sydney<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But for him and many of his surfing mates, the compelling pull of the city\u2019s world-famous surf breaks has been neutered by tragedy, fear and uncertainty.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of my surfer friends are not going in,\u201d says Harcourt who, at 65, mixes his retirement and daily swims and surfs with ongoing research as an emeritus professor and the leader of Macquarie University\u2019s marine predator research group. \u201cA lot of people are very nervous \u2013 they\u2019re traumatised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sydney\u2019s beaches have been rocked by a spate of shark bites and deaths<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The latest was last Saturday, when 34-year-old Leah Stewart suffered shocking injuries from a suspected great white shark bite. Her arm has been amputated and her family says she remains critical in hospital intensive care.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

Conditions should have been perfect for a safe swim. Stewart was between the flags on a patrolled beach in clear water in the middle of the day \u2013 all things experts such as Harcourt say reduce a person\u2019s chances of being bitten.<\/p>\n

While the recent spate of bites has many Sydney ocean lovers on edge, they are part of a sharply rising trend of shark bites on Australia\u2019s coastlines.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople just want to know why,\u201d says Harcourt. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a definitive answer. But we do know some things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harcourt snorkelling off North Bondi. Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Globally, Australia is second only to the US for shark bites on humans. But where global trends are mostly flat, the number of bites in Australia is rising.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s population centres overlap the homes of the three sharks most often responsible for the worst bites: great whites, tigers and bulls.<\/p>\n

The Australian Shark Incident file shows in the 1950s there was an average of 3.1 unprovoked \u201cincidents\u201d each year across the country \u2013 that includes bites and attempted bites, but doesn\u2019t include incidents where the shark may have been provoked, or if a person was spear fishing at the time.<\/p>\n

The number of bites rose slowly until the 2000s, when it went from 12 incidents per year to the current rate this decade of 21.<\/p>\n

The number of deaths from shark bites has gone up from an average of 1.7 per year in the 50s to 3.8 in this decade so far (better response times and the availability of tourniquet kits at surf life-saving clubs have likely saved lives).<\/p>\n

The bite figures do not account for population growth but, even if they did, they would not account for how many of those people actually go in the water or whether they are swimming or surfing in places that overlap with sharks.<\/p>\n

One review of shark bites found 40 different factors had been suggested as contributors<\/a> to the risk of a shark bite \u2013 from an increase in the popularity of board sports to the proximity of popular beaches to river mouths. But there was little research into most of them.<\/p>\n

Harcourt says despite all this uncertainty, some changes are known.<\/p>\n

Warming oceans may be bringing bull and tiger sharks into closer contact with humans. Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Warming ocean temperatures mean that bull sharks are spending more time in the Sydney area. Tiger sharks also prefer warmer water.<\/p>\n

The numbers of seals and whales \u2013 food for larger sharks \u2013 have also been recovering since hunting stopped, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSwimming next to a seal colony probably puts you in greater risk,\u201d says Harcourt, because sometimes sharks bite a human to see if it\u2019s food, like a seal.<\/p>\n

But could the rise in bites be because there are more sharks in the water, as former prime minister Tony Abbott claimed this week?<\/p>\n

The state government keeps data on the number of marine animals caught in shark nets. Harcourt says if there were an explosion in shark numbers, then a lot more would also be caught in those nets. But he says the data shows no significant changes.<\/p>\n

Dr Daryl McPhee researches shark bite trends at Bond University on the surf-crazy Gold Coast in Queensland.<\/p>\n

In the past five years, there has been an average of four deaths a year in Australia from shark bites \u2013 this year, he says there have already been four.<\/p>\n

So he says the rising trend of bites is \u201cconsistent with what people are feeling\u201d in places such as Sydney.<\/p>\n

But the risk of a bite, he says, can vary from beach to beach, day to day and species to species. The location of a shark\u2019s food, such as seals or large schools of fish, at any given time, is another big factor.<\/p>\n

Despite calls for culls of sharks in social media and from some high-profile people<\/a>, experts say it\u2019s unlikely to work in Australia because sharks are migratory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an old colonial view that we can bend nature to our will,\u201d McPhee says.<\/p>\n

Fearing things we can\u2019t control<\/p>\n

When shark bites occur, the public will often be told by experts that they are very rare events and they are more likely to die, to use a few examples, from being hit by a coconut, struck by lightning or, perhaps a more relevant comparison, from drowning (there were 82 deaths from drowning at Australian beaches last year).<\/p>\n

Dr Brianna Le Busque, who researches public perceptions of sharks at Adelaide University, says these comparisons do little to assuage our fear of sharks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know it\u2019s not helping,\u201d she says. \u201cWe talk about how rare bites are and that almost makes it feel even more random and that we have even less control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Le Busque says humans fear things we think we can\u2019t control.<\/p>\n

Research has shown surfers are less fearful of sharks than the general public. Photograph: Jessica Hromas\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the time bites occur without a reasonable explanation for what\u2019s happened at that time and in that place and so we feel out of control,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Le Busque surveyed surfers from around the world<\/a> \u2013 mostly in the US \u2013 and found they feared sharks less than the general public, even though they were more likely to encounter sharks or hear about encounters.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of them said these encounters were non-events. Maybe because these encounters are not negative, that gives them an anchor point [for their response].\u201d<\/p>\n

How to keep safe<\/p>\n

Public discussion about shark safety are further muddied because of people\u2019s differing values. Killing sharks on the pretence of protecting humans may be fine for some people, but anathema to others.<\/p>\n

Australia first introduced shark nets at beaches more than 80 years ago.<\/p>\n

In recent years, governments have introduced other measures, including baited hooks to catch sharks (controversial because of the high numbers of non-target species caught), improved safety information, drone monitoring and \u201clistening stations\u201d to alert beachgoers when a tagged shark is close.<\/p>\n

Prof Corey Bradshaw, an ecologist at Flinders University, has been part of studies into the various measures, including those deployed on beaches<\/a>. He says when done well, steps like public education, drones and some personal protection, can cut the risk.<\/p>\n

But on shark nets, he is clear. \u201cI think they are bullshit,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re an environmental catastrophe and there is no evidence that they reduce the incidence of shark bites. They should have been pulled out of the water 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs humans we have this innate evolutionary response to predators, and so we inflate the risk in our brains, even though the risk is extremely small.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we do other risky behaviours because they\u2019re familiar and we do them all the time. Like driving to the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rob Harcourt is heading back from a \u201cbeautiful surf\u201d at Bondi on a warm and sunny winter\u2019s morning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-513097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}