00:00The beaches and breaks around the tiny town of Elliston are world class.
00:17The reason that we live out here so far away from everything is because of the surf.
00:24And along with the dolphins and seals the surfers know, they share the waves with something
00:30else.
00:31The huge white pointers are unpredictable, terrifying and ferocious monsters.
00:37Great white sharks have always drawn fascination and fear, hunted to the edge of extinction.
00:44In 1999, great whites were declared a protected species, but 2024, the 25th anniversary of
00:54our protection was a grim milestone in South Australia.
00:58Shark attack, a surfer still missing after a suspected encounter with a...
01:01Six attacks in eight months, three of them fatal, two were in the tiny community of Elliston.
01:09The first attack was when we lost Simon.
01:14Teacher Simon Baccanello had just moved to town.
01:18We were surfing with him when he was taken and that just rocked all of us.
01:24He was just so loved at the school, he was just stoked to be here.
01:30As the community grieved, the town experienced a second trauma.
01:34A 64-year-old man is recovering in hospital after the sixth shark attack in South Australian
01:40waters in little more than six months.
01:42Murray Adams taught alongside Simon at the local school and survived the bite.
01:48Now many are questioning whether protecting great whites is costing human lives.
01:53We started protecting him and then we just left it at that and sometimes I feel like
01:59we as surfers and ocean users are just left as cannon fodder.
02:06In the waters off the Neptune Islands around 200 kilometres south of Elliston, Flinders
02:11University ecologist Charlie Houveniers is trying to better understand great white numbers.
02:17He's collecting genetic samples for population modelling.
02:21But the range is actually quite broad, going from about 1,200 to a bit more than 3,000
02:26adult white sharks.
02:28Professor Houveniers says there's no scientific evidence that shark numbers have recovered
02:33and even if they had, it wouldn't explain the recent attacks.
02:37We don't know what happened in South Australia in that summer of 2023-2024.
02:43It was an unusual cluster of shark bites, but we're actually seeing this kind of cluster
02:48of bites regularly happening, not just in Australia but across the world.
02:55Houveniers says policies for population recovery need to be matched with appropriate mitigation,
03:02arguing that culling sharks is not an effective way to protect swimmers, compared to a range
03:07of new technologies like barriers, real-time warning systems, shark deterrents and drones.
03:14Dr Brianna Labusk agrees.
03:17She's an expert in how public perceptions affect conservation.
03:21In her research, one movie is mentioned a lot.
03:26We definitely think there is such a thing as the Jaws effect.
03:30Multiple studies have suggested the 50-year-old blockbuster is still influencing public opinion
03:36and also public policy.
03:38Some of the policies around the idea of culling sharks and sort of if a shark gets a taste
03:44for humans then they have to be killed because they're going to keep biting humans.
03:48There's no scientific evidence that sharks do that.
03:54In the shadow of newly installed trauma kits, the surfers of Elliston have returned to the
03:59ocean that has taken so much.
04:04It's so wild how much the ocean has been imperative to our recovery as well.
04:12Getting back into the water and just that is what getting back to normal life looks
04:16like for us too.
04:17A way of life worth saving.
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