Shark alert: ‘stop catching them and they will come’

Commercial fisherman David Woods says the uncontrolled number of sharks in the Ballina area has become ominous.

David Woods is a commercial fisherman from Ballina who caught an average of 3.8 4m-long sharks every working day for 15 years. Picture: Glenn Hunt

If anyone in Ballina knows sharks, it’s David Woods. A commercial fisherman, he says he caught an average of 3.8 4m-long sharks every working day for 15 years. Now, having seen a spate of people killed or mauled by sharks around the northern NSW town, he says another fatal attack is ­imminent.

Mr Woods stopped fishing for sharks in 2009 because restrictions on catches and the paperwork involved made his business unviable. Other shark fishermen in the area have done the same.

“I’m predicting there will be another fatal attack in January,” he said.

He said this was traditionally the month when large great whites migrated back down the coast. This, combined with the constant presence of juvenile great whites, tigers, bulls and bronze whalers had made the water unsafe. Asked what percentage of his catch of large sharks were species that attacked people, he said: “They all were.”

A Department of Primary Industries spokeswoman dismissed any link between the decrease in shark fishing and the increase in attacks.

“There is no evidence that a decrease in the commercial catch of sharks has resulted in the increased number of recent shark attacks,” she said.

The NSW government has faced criticism over its apparent sluggish response to protecting ocean-goers, including the possible installation of shark nets on the north coast.

Mr Woods bought his boat, designed to catch large sharks, in 2001 for $180,000. He targeted tiger and bull sharks and sold almost the whole body to various businesses: the meat went to fish fertiliser, fins were exported to China, liver and oil went to a Tasmanian smallgoods producer and the skin went to a South Australian tannery.

At his peak, Mr Woods said, he was earning $250,000 to $300,000 a year., but he stopped fishing sharks in 2009 when the department introduced limits of 500kg a week. Now he is earning $80,000.

“It’s barely worth it,” he said.

The department disputes Mr Woods’s claim about the proportion of man-eaters in the commercial catch, saying most of the commercial catch in 2008-09, his last year, consisted of non-lethal species, such as sandbar and spinner sharks. In the early 2000s, he said he approached a CSIRO researcher and asked if he was fishing himself out of business. “He told me they were breeding faster than I can catch them,” he said.

Attempts to have this verified by the CSIRO failed.

Mr Woods recently attended a meeting at the council chambers in Ballina at which various shark experts tried to explain the need to protect and study sharks.

“Everybody who was there, they were all getting grants to study sharks,” Mr Woods said. “Everybody was just looking after their own interest. They weren’t worried about the next poor bugger who’s going to get bit.”

Another Ballina commercial fisherman, Paul Porter, said the worst time of year was January to March.

Last year, while fishing for mackerel, often only 600m from where people were swimming, he was losing 20-30 fish a day to great whites stalking his boat. “The year before you’d lose maybe one a week,” he said. He estimated he lost $10,000 to $20,000 worth of fish to sharks in the three-month period.

“I think we are going to struggle to fish this year,” he said, adding that the same conditions applied between the Queensland border and Evans Head, a stretch of about 100km.

Asked if he thought there would be another attack soon, he said: “Definitely. If people keep going in the water, there will definitely be another attack.”

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