Scientists urge encounters with sharks to be called ‘bites’ not ‘attacks’

Authorities in Queensland and NSW are signalling a shift away from describing encounters between sharks and humans as “attacks”, a move scientists say is both welcome and well overdue.

A senior Queensland official told a Noosa shark symposium in May the state’s communications would preference “bites” over “attacks” based on social research, three scientists attending the meeting have told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Its SharkSmart website lists how to minimise risks “of a negative encounter with a shark”.

In NSW, the Department of Primary Industries has also gradually moved from dubbing shark-human contacts as “attacks” in its annual reports. It has worked closely with Bite Club, a support group for survivors to inform its language.

“NSW DPI is respectful that each incident is best described by the individual involved,” a spokeswoman said. “DPI generally refers to ‘incidents’ or ‘interactions’ in our formal shark reporting.”

Researchers such as Christopher Pepin-Neff from the University of Sydney, who has studied the language used, say such encounters were dubbed locally as “shark accidents” before the 1930s when a prominent surgeon, Victor Coppleson, began to describe them as attacks. Shark nets also began to be introduced on city beaches.

The choice of words can be potent since public fears about beach safety can be inflamed by alarmist language by politicians and the media, said Leonardo Guida, a shark researcher at the Australian Marine Conservation Society, who attended the May gathering hosted by the Noosa Biosphere Reserve Foundation.

A change in language matters “because it helps dispel inherent assumptions that sharks are ravenous, mindless man-eating monsters”, Dr Guida said.

For its part, Queensland’s Department of Agriculture and Fisheries said there had “been no formal direction in this space and some people may just have a personal preference for the language they use”. In Victoria, fisheries describe the encounters on its Shark Smart advice only as “attacks”.

Attendees at the Noosa event, though, said the message from the Queensland Shark Control Program official was clear.

“We sat up at the mention,” said Lawrence Chlebeck, a marine campaigner with Humane Society International, who added he later approached the official and her boss. “I congratulated them for their change of terminology.”

Dr Pepin-Neff said the shift in wording “has been coming for a while”.

“‘Shark attack’ is a lie”, he said, noting that more than a third of encounters left no injury at all. Many others include minor bites from small sharks – such as people stepping on wobbegongs – that would not have been a predatory action on the part of the animal.

Australian surfer Mick Fanning’s close encounter with a white was captured live on television during a 2015 competition in South Africa.

Shark experts, though, say the fish can of course be predatory, such as when they breach the surface and snap seals in their jaws. But since their lineage goes back as far as 450 million years, they have little familiarity with much more recently arrived humans.

“Sharks don’t have hands so, if they want to explore something, they mouth it,” Nathan Hart, an associate professor at Macquarie University, said. “Very rarely are humans consumed by sharks.”

The increasing availability of drone footage regularly shows sharks close to surfers for extended periods of time. On the very rare occasion they bite, the animals are more likely to keep going rather than have another sample of the odd mix of flesh, wetsuit and surfboard.

Professor Hart works with teams in Australia and South Africa to identify why sharks may move on a human, and how that motivation may be discouraged. Results of the research, including the application of lights to the underside of surfboards, will be submitted for publication soon.

A large great white shark off Hawaii’s Oahu. With a lineage of more than 60 million years, the sharks would not know what to make of humans, scientists say.Credit: AP

Dr Guida said the public could differentiate between dog bites and dog attacks, and avoiding the term “attacks” in reporting shark encounters “helps improve the public’s understanding of sharks and how they behave”.

The terminology can also be important especially if words such as “attacks” prompt people to demand culls of what are already often protected animals. Shark numbers are globally in decline because of over-fishing, pollution and the increasing impacts of climate change, including around Australia.

“The worst thing we want is people killing a lot of sharks,” Professor Hart said.

When Ballina-based surfer Cooper Allen recounts his encounter with a great white shark five years ago, he prefers to take what he calls a low-key approach rather than dwell on “dark things”.

“I tell people, ‘I had a bit of run-in with a man in a grey suit,’ ” said Mr Allen, who, as a 17-year-old, suffered deep wounds to a leg after a shark bite.

A large shark filmed swimming nearby Kingscliff in northern NSW in June 2020, soon after the death of a surfer from a shark bite.Credit: Nine News

“I prefer it to be bit light-hearted ... I don’t want to make other people uncomfortable.”

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