This text was initially featured on Hakai Journal, an internet publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Learn extra tales like this at hakaimagazine.com.
It’s 8:00 a.m. on a sunny 29 °C Saturday at Alexandra Headland on the Sunshine Coast of southeast Queensland, Australia. Swimmers porpoise by the shimmering water, whereas farther offshore surfers straddle their boards in anticipation of the subsequent huge wave. If anybody is anxious a couple of shark chew, you wouldn’t understand it.
“Probably not, most likely ought to,” says 18-year-old surfer Jake Hazelwood of Cairns, a metropolis farther to the north. “While you’re on the market, you simply zone all the pieces else out.”
Hazelwood can also be oblivious to the drone taking off from the seashore simply 20 meters away, the state authorities’s newest instrument to assist preserve common coastal areas protected for people—and protected for sharks.
For many years, Queensland has relied on nets and baited-hook drumlines to assist shield beachgoers from sharks. However that security comes at a value to marine life. Final 12 months alone, that gear caught 958 animals, together with 798 sharks—70 p.c of which died. Sixteen turtles additionally perished as unintended victims together with 10 dolphins and two dugongs, a susceptible species in Queensland. And in 2022, 15 humpback whales have been caught in shark nets, although all of them have been safely eliminated.
The federal government is contemplating changing its deadly measures with utilizing camera-equipped drones to seek for sharks, and Alexandra Headland is among the areas for a trial program that’s already exhibiting success.
It’s surprisingly simple to identify sharks while you fly over them, says Rob Adsett, the chief distant pilot with the Australian Lifeguard Service. “Know-how is getting higher.”
The infrared-equipped drone that Adsett and his colleagues used off Alexandra Headland can fly for 20 minutes in winds above 35 kilometers per hour. The pilots fly the drone alongside a 400-meter route parallel to shore behind the surf break. On busy seashore days, the drone zips alongside at as much as 20 kilometers per hour, staying out of the best way at an altitude of 60 meters. When pilots detect a shark, they decrease the drone to 30 meters to allow them to determine the animal’s measurement and species, a activity that may grow to be harder when it’s raining or if the water is murky or tough.
If the pilots deem the shark a hazard, they’ll evacuate the seashore whereas lifeguards comply with in inflatable boats or private watercraft to trace the animal and monitor the risk.
Throughout their trials in 2020 and 2021, which concerned 3,669 drone flights at seven seashores, drone pilots detected 174 sharks, together with 48 that have been higher than two meters in size. For seashore customers and lifeguards, the presence of massive sharks, particularly white, tiger, and bull sharks, is the best concern, and these sightings led to 4 seashore evacuations.
Queensland’s effort is following on the heels of an analogous mission that has been underway in New South Wales, the state simply to the south, since 2017.
For conservationists, the swap away from nets and drumlines can’t come quickly sufficient. Any additional delay in eradicating the deadly deterrents “is baffling,” says Leo Guida, a shark scientist with Australian Marine Conservation Society. “They’ve bought the answer on the desk.”
Drones, says Guida, may save individuals by dropping life-saving gear to somebody struggling within the water. “You’re extra prone to save somebody from drowning than interacting with a harmful animal,” he says. “There are clear advantages throughout the board” to having drones on the seashore.
The toll of the nets and drumlines on sharks additionally needs to be balanced in opposition to the risk sharks really pose to beachgoers. In response to Adsett, “You’ve bought extra of an opportunity of getting hit by a automobile on the best way to the seashore than getting attacked by a shark.”
Nonetheless, shark bites do occur. Although rare, chew charges are rising.
The Australia Shark Incident Database recorded 1,196 shark bites within the nation over the previous 231 years, from 1791 to 2022. These bites prompted 250 deaths, whereas 723 individuals suffered accidents. Nobody was injured within the different 223 circumstances, which cowl incidents similar to bites to surfboards.
Shark bites jumped from a median of 9 per 12 months in 1990–2000 to 22 per 12 months in 2010–2020, partially due to the rising human inhabitants alongside the coast.
However even nets and drumlines, Guida argues, aren’t any assure in opposition to bites as a result of sharks can merely swim round them. That’s what occurred in 2020 when a male surfer in Queensland died after being bitten at Greenmount Seashore, a stretch of shoreline outfitted with nets and drumlines. As for whether or not the nets could be changed with drones, the Queensland authorities has at the very least seen sufficient to proceed their trials. They’ve dedicated to increasing the mission, which is able to proceed by June 2025 at a value of roughly US $1.3-million per 12 months.
This text first appeared in Hakai Journal, and is republished right here with permission.
