FEATURE-Shark attacks spark "kill or be killed" debate - Culling sharks?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SYD250378.htm

<ssnip>"It's time they started controlling the numbers. Controlled culling -- they kill our national emblem, the kangaroo, they kill elephants in Africa," he said. snip

By September 2005, there had been 652 shark attacks, 191 of them fatal, in Australian waters in the past 200 years, according to the Australian Shark Attack File at Sydney's Taronga Zoo.

In the past 50 years, 60 people have died after being attacked by a shark, 1.2 fatal attacks a year. This compares with two to three deaths each year from bee stings and hundreds of drownings by beach swimmers and fishermen. snip

The odds of a shark attack are 15-20 million to one, he said.

[xray s]

1. why not ban driving?

tens of thousands die in car crashes.

[Tace]

2. Yeah, It's The Sharks, Damn It!

[LeftyMom]

3. Culling doesn't work

Lage sharks are very mobile, so even if you do a cull directly after an attack the attacking shark will probably be somewhere else by the time the boats are in the water.

Removing the large sharks does imbalance the marine enviornment and does not prevent attacks, as shark hunts in Hawaii and nets set along beaches South Africa and Australia have demonstrated. In any case, there's a great deal of evidence that numbers of large sharks in general and white sharks in specific are down in Austrailan waters. Oh, and the White Shark is a protected species under Australian law and the international CITES treaty regulating trade in endangered species, as well as in South Africa, California, Florida and a few other places so a wide-scale hunt would probably be illegal anyhow.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Many shark species are already endangered.