- Analysis
- Environment
- Conservation
- Sharks
Why shark nets might not return to Sydney’s beaches next summer
Every spring since 1937, the NSW government has installed shark nets at 51 beaches in Greater Sydney. Next spring could be different.
The science has been clear for some time that the mesh nets do little to protect humans, yet do much harm to non-target species such as harmless grey nurse sharks, dolphins, humpback whales, stingrays and turtles. Now it seems the politics might also be shifting.
Last July, when Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty announced shark nets would be returning for this summer, there were two significant elements to what she said.
First, she announced that the nets would be removed one month earlier than usual to respond to increased turtle activity in April. As well as helping turtles, this could also serve the purpose of letting Moriarty test public sentiment. A lack of public outcry could embolden her to go further.
Second, Moriarty also promised to seek input from councils to inform what the program would look like for the 2025-26 summer and beyond. This might seem a somewhat milquetoast proposition, and it was largely overlooked at the time. Yet, that consultation is now underway and councils believe it to be genuine.
On Tuesday, Moriarty said she had not made a decision about the future of shark nets in NSW and would not pre-empt the consultation. She flagged that one possibility was allowing “local decision-making on the removal or use of nets”.
After the local government elections in September, the Department of Primary Industries sent councils a briefing pack with factual information on its shark mitigation programs including statistical information personalised for each council. A version was sent to 25 coastal councils from Tweed to Bega Valley, including the eight in Greater Sydney with shark mesh nets.
The mesh nets are old technology and were designed to kill sharks and reduce their population over time rather than create an unbreachable barrier.
The nets are about 150 metres long and six metres high, set 10-12 metres underwater within 500 metres of shore. Sharks can – and do – swim over, under and around the nets.
What they do is indiscriminately catch sharks and other animals that inadvertently swim into them, killing them in most circumstances, especially sea mammals or reptiles that need to surface to breathe.
Duncan Heuer, who for several years has been raising awareness in the community about the ineffectiveness of shark nets and the high bycatch, has republished news reports from the 1930s showing the nets were intended to reduce the numbers of sharks every season and “rid the ocean of sharks” over time.
The current advice provided by the Department to councils is that the mesh nets “serve as a deterrent, not a complete barrier” and are “considered controversial due to concerns about their impact on marine life”.
These days there is far more effective technology to detect and deter sharks than mesh nets.
SMART drumlines are used up and down the coast – there are 305 deployed daily, depending on the weather, in 19 local government areas. “SMART” stands for “Shark-Management-Alert-In-Real-Time” and the idea is that the sharks are intercepted, relocated by a boat and then tagged and released.
There are also tagged shark listening stations – between one and four in every NSW coastal council – and drones operated by Surf Life Saving NSW up and down the coast.
From 2014-15 to 2023-24 there were 3825 animals caught in mesh nets across Greater Sydney, department figures show. Of those, only 315 were target sharks and 3510 were non-target animals. Less than half survived.
Meanwhile, from 2022-23 to 2023-24 there were 915 target sharks caught by SMART drumlines and 756 non-target animals, but the vast majority survived and were released alive.
As The Sydney Morning Herald has previously reported, this includes critically endangered grey nurse sharks.
Most coastal councils were already opposed to shark nets, including Waverley, Northern Beaches, Central Coast and Wollongong (Randwick’s position is unclear).
But in a sign of the shifting politics, Sutherland Shire Council has changed its tune. The council overwhelmingly voted against removing mesh nets in 2023, but in December 2024 it voted unanimously to recommend their removal.
There were some new councillors along with incumbent members who changed their minds after being shown the department’s briefing pack and hearing speeches from Valerie Taylor, the conservationist who filmed part of Jaws, and a representative from the Humane Society International.
New Sutherland councillor Kal Glanznig, who has campaigned hard on the issue and worked to educate his colleagues, says it was hard to ignore the evidence that SMART drumlines were so much more effective than nets.
Community campaigner Heuer says the politics are changing because more and more people are wising up to what shark nets can and can’t do, and the damage they inflict on marine ecosystems.
A shift backed up by the Department’s own survey of the general public in the 2022-23 summer, which found that between 20-40 per cent of people, from a representative sample, were dissatisfied or strongly dissatisfied with traditional shark nets.