Australia Fends Off Shark Bites With New Tech And Old

ETVBHARAT

Globally, about 37 percent of oceanic shark and ray species are now listed as either endangered or critically endangered by the IUCN

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00:00Hovering over the beaches in Sydney, drones are looking to spot one of the world's deadliest

00:08predators, the great white sharks. They scan for the flick of a tail, the swish of a fin or a shadow

00:16slipping through the swell. Australia's oceans are teeming with sharks, with great whites topping

00:21the list of species that might fatally chomp a human. Undeterred, Australians flock to the

00:27sea in huge numbers, with a 2024 survey showing nearly two-thirds of the population made a total

00:32of 650 million coastal visits in a single year. Many beach lovers accept the risks.

00:39Increasingly, crowded waters and rising ocean temperatures that appear to be swaying sharks'

00:44migratory patterns may be contributing to an escalation in attacks despite overfishing

00:50depleting some species, scientists say. They are also trying to make shark encounters less

00:55deadly with measures such as bite-resistant materials and electronic deterrents. Some

01:00bite-resistant wetsuits may reduce injuries and blood loss, the most common cause of death

01:05from shark bite, according New South Wales funded research by Flinders University Professor Charlie

01:11Huveniers and his team.

01:13Obviously, if you can avoid people and sharks being at the same place at the same time, they're

01:17not going to get a chance to bite people. And that can be achieved, obviously, ideally through

01:23an enclosure. And that may be the only way to really eliminate the risk of shark bites. But

01:28that's not going to be feasible for all activities like surfing or diving, for example. But there

01:33are also other ways that you can reduce that overlap through, for example, early warning systems.

01:39You can have some aerial patrols or drones or even these real-time listening stations that

01:45can detect tagged sharks so that people can be made aware when a shark is in the area and

01:50evacuate the water if necessary. But there's still going to be times when people and sharks

01:54will overlap and will be next to each other. So the next step is to then try to reduce the

02:00likelihood or the probability of a shark bite. And that's where this shark deterrent comes

02:06into play.

02:07More than 1,280 shark incidents have been recorded around Australia since 1791, about 260 of them

02:14being fatal, according to a national database. Though still relatively rare, fatal attacks

02:20do appear to be on the rise, with 56 reported deaths in the 25 years to 2025, compared to

02:2627 deaths in the previous quarter century. But how best to protect people from sharks is

02:31a sensitive topic in Australia. Authorities have deployed a multi-layered approach, deploying

02:36drones fixing acoustic trackers to sharks so that they can be detected by listening buoys near

02:42popular beaches, alerting people in real-time with a mobile app and stringing up old-fashioned

02:47nets. Drones have become a key resource, spotting more than 1,000 of the predators in the past

02:53year as they prowled New South Wales coastal waters.

02:56This study was funded by the New South Wales Department of Primary Industry and Regional Development

03:02and enabled the testing of this material that people were coming up with and suggesting would

03:08reduce the injuries from a shark bite. Initially, I was a bit dubious about how some kind of material

03:14would be able to withstand a shark bite from a large 4-metre or 5-metre great-wide shark, but I was

03:21generally surprised when we compared this bite-resistant material to standard neoprene at how much that new

03:29material was able to reduce damages and therefore injuries that people could get from a shark bite. But again,

03:36it's not going to be foolproof and there will be a situation when a shark might still bite a person

03:43and that's where good and quick emergency response but also this bite-resistant material can come

03:50into play in terms of reducing the severity of the injuries that can then provide more time for the emergency

03:56services to get to the victim and also reduce how much time it takes to recover from a shark bite.

04:03Researchers say shark lives do need protecting. Globally, about 37% of oceanic shark and race

04:09species are now listed as either endangered or critically endangered by the International

04:14Union for Conservation of Nature, a global database for threatened species.

04:19What we found from talking to medical doctors that have dealt with shark bite victim is that the main

04:26trauma or the cause of death is not crushing injuries, but it is blood loss or the loss of a limb or tissue loss.

04:33So if we can reduce that type of injuries, if we can reduce blood loss, we can actually save life,

04:39but also reduce that recovery time as well. I would happily say that Australia is at the forefront

04:44of shark bite mitigation measures. While sharks may instill trepidation in Australia's waters,

04:50official data shows drowning is a far bigger risk, killing 357 people in the 12 months to June this year.

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