SAVING SURFERS IS QUITE A BUSINESS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22664, 15 June 1948, Page 6

SAVING SURFERS IS QUITE A BUSINESS

Protecting from sharks the many thousands of surfers on Sydney beaches is quite a business. And the business is in the hands of a company which has a Government contract to maintain shark nets offshore so that surfing may go on in safety. Under the contract, nets 500 ft. long and 20ft. deep, are set a certain number of times a month parallel with the beach. The number set for 24-hour periods at each beach runs from eight to 30 a month, varying with the size of the beach and the number of sharks about. .Two vessels are on the job and they go out every day, hauling in nets, checking them and resetting them or taking them to other beaches. In the eight months ending February 1, nets were set 2260 times, 66 a week. In that time 500 sharks were caught, 200 of them dangerous. Shark-catching is not the main business or the nets would be set at right angles to the beach. There is a market for shark flesh, but most sharks are dead when found in the nets and when a shark has been dead for a few hours it is uneatable. Ammonia from around the backbone spreads through the flesh. If one is alive its tail is cut off and its belly ripped open. Then it sinks when dumped out at sea. Nets have an 11-inch mesh, are held by a 401 b anchor and buoyed by glass floats. Says the president of the Surf Lifesaving Association, “There hasn’t been one attack since meshing started.”