Tourist mecca of Ballina alarmed over shark safety

The council that oversees northern NSW beaches is ramping up drone patrols for sharks in time for an influx of tourists.

‘Sharks are just one of the many risks associated with the sea,’ says David Wright, mayor of Ballina Shire Council, at Lighthouse Beach in Ballina. Picture: Natalie Grono

The council that oversees northern NSW beaches which have long attracted sharks is ramping up drone patrols in time for an influx of tourists, but says calls for further funding to protect surfers fell on deaf ears.

Despite a spate of attacks along the east coast, Ballina Shire mayor David Wright said he didn’t think nets to protect swimmers would ever return, with the council relying upon an integrated approach to shark mitigation, which involved drone surveillance, SMART drum lines and VR4G listening stations. “I don’t think the nets will ever come back here,” he said. “They might have deterred the sharks, but the bycatch was far too great. Sharks are just one of the many risks associated with the sea.”

Despite evidence there was “definitely more sharks” around recently, Mr Wright said his ­requests to the NSW government for $1m in extra funding, a bid to service more drone surveillance flights in the busy winter months, went unanswered.

“I wrote to (Northern Tablelands MP) Adam Marshall asking for some extra help to help lifeguards with drones … but I didn’t get an answer,” he said.

Although the busiest winter in memory went by without incident around Ballina, there have been several shark attacks nearby. This included the first fatal incident at Gold Coast beaches in 60 years and 15-year-old Mani Hart-­Deville being attacked while surfing at Wilsons Headland off Wooli Beach.

With more than 600 sharks caught on drum lines since they were installed, significantly more than the 200 the council initially thought they would snare, Mr Wright said not many of those had been recaptured, pointing to a high number of sharks in the area.

A lot has changed since Ballina local Mat Lee had his leg torn off while bodyboarding at Lighthouse Beach in 2015, and community members were in support of culling sharks. Yet Mr Wright said results from the north coast net trial, which put nets from Lennox Head Beach to Shelly Beach, proved to locals nonlethal methods were more effective in keeping them and marine life safe.

In a statement, a spokesman for the Department of Primary Industries said an extra $8m in funding had been provided to protect beachgoers. “This program is supported by the findings of a $16m, five-year shark management strategy, which allowed the government to test and trial state-of-the-art mitigation methods and increase knowledge of the movement and ecology of sharks to improve community safety,” he said. With international borders closed until 2021 at the earliest, and no sign of when state borders will reopen, the area surrounding Byron is booked out, leading to fears heightened levels of shark and human activity could have disastrous consequences.