Every September, along with wildflowers, sunshine and spring babies, come shark nets.

Since it began in 1937, the NSW Government’s Shark Meshing (aka ‘Bather Protection’) Program has run annually through spring and summer, with nets set to drop back in at 51 beaches between Newcastle and Wollongong on September 1.

Year after year, the program is called into question. Conservationists criticise it for killing rays, turtles and dolphins as well as sharks. Beach-safety experts – including local scientist Professor Rob 'Dr Rip' Brander – think the money would be better spent on lifeguards. Even the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) admits the nets – about 150m wide, 6m high, set in water 10-12m deep – are no safety guarantee, as sharks can swim around, over and under them.

“They’re not effective,” says Teaniel Mifsud, a PhD candidate exploring human-shark encounters on the NSW South Coast at the University of Wollongong’s School of Geography and Sustainable Communities.

“Chris Pepin-Neff from Sydney University said 40% of sharks that are captured in those nets are on the beach side of the nets when they’re caught. So they’re getting around them or under them.

“It’s not this big protection wall that I think some people imagine…  And it is harming, not only sharks, but other marine animals.

“There’s a lot of collateral damage.”

The death toll

Of the 255 marine animals caught in the 2023/24 meshing season from September to April, only 15 were target sharks (12 whites, 3 tigers). Most of the remaining 240 animals were rays, turtles and dolphins, and 64% percent of them died, according to the Department of Primary Industries’ Shark Meshing Program 2023/24 Annual Performance Report.

“They’re endangering already endangered species,” Teaniel said of the nets.

“We can’t be just killing an animal because there’s a chance it might attack someone. That’s not the way to go about mitigation. It’s more about having the knowledge about when to enter the water and maybe when’s not the safest time … education about those things is more important.”

If logic fails us when it comes to shark nets, then this is a decision made on emotion. Which is why Teaniel’s research is so valuable – it puts the focus on people and their interactions with sharks, making groundbreaking use of geographic information systems, including digital mapping.

“I’m looking at understanding shark encounters and how people use the ocean and how to map that, and use that technology in a way that it hadn’t really been used before,” she said.

From surf life saving to shark studies

Being a life saver inspired Teaniel’s PhD research, which has been supervised by Dr Leah Gibbs and Dr Chris Brennan-Horley.

“I became really interested in sharks, and research around beaches and oceans, because I was a surf lifesaver for six and a half years at Fairy Meadow,” she said.

Her first encounter involved having to close the beach after a shark “literally just jumped up through the waves”. Surf Life Saving protocols kicked in and she helped get swimmers out the water and close the beach.

“The people in the water didn’t see it, which was interesting.”

The second time she was on an early-morning board paddle out the back of Fairy Meadow Beach. “It wasn’t a very big shark, but it just swam straight onto my board.

“I think it was a whaler… I wasn’t overly familiar with different shark species, as I am now.”

Teaniel said adrenaline shot through her body as the shark appeared in clear water then swam on.

“It did not care about me. It was more of a really cool experience.

“I’ve come to understand that that’s a pretty mundane encounter – that’s something that happens to surfers quite often.”

These experiences led to Teaniel starting a PhD in 2020, collecting more than 120 crowdsourced stories of shark encounters and doing 23 long-form interviews.

“It’s been a really nice, fun project and I’ve learnt a lot,” she said.

“I went into it having this idea that people had really either big scary encounters, where they talk about, 'Oh, I got bitten', or 'I got chased by a shark', or 'I had this white shark stalk me'. I definitely did have some of those interviews.

“But then there was the flip-side, where it was like this big magical life-changing experience, where people talk about encounters with wildlife being these big fantastical moments.

“At other points, it was just very mundane – it was part of their experience within the ocean.”

Calls to end netting

As shark nets are installed midway through the East Coast humpback migration season, they also pose a risk to whales.

Last September a humpback whale was saved after being entangled in a net off Catherine Hill Bay on the Hunter coast and whales have also been trapped in Queensland shark nets. In October 2023, the ABC reported a humpback calf was rescued after Sunshine Coast residents heard the whale crying out during the night “like a didgeridoo echoing through the whole headland”.

For Jess Whittaker, the Greens’ candidate for Ward 1 and Wollongong Lord Mayor in September's local government elections, shark nets have long been a local conservation issue. She raised it in March, after a dolphin was entangled at Thirroul Beach, calling on the state government to abandon shark netting. In June, she spoke at a Nets Out Now! event at Thirroul Community Centre, attended by about 50 people, and at July's Thirroul Village Committee forum was the only council candidate to mention the subject.

While the state government oversees the program, many councils, including Wollongong, have voiced opposition to shark nets. The Australian Marine Conservation Society is a fierce critic, describing them as “51 wildlife death traps”. Humane Society International is campaigning to get #NetsOutNow. Sea Shepherd Australia wants bather protection methods that don't kill, such as physical barriers like the WA-designed Eco Shark Barrier, electromagnetic personal protection devices, aerial drones and public education. 

This season, the $21.5 million NSW Shark Management Program will also include SMART drumlines, Surf Life Saving NSW drone patrols and listening stations, such as the one at Stanwell Park, which record tagged sharks on the SharkSMART app.

SLSNSW supports measures aimed at protecting people. “Regular feedback from the community is that they feel safer swimming where shark meshing is installed, however, they remain concerned by the amount of bycatch,” a Surf Living Saving spokesperson said.

In Wollongong, the netted beaches are Coledale, Austinmer, Thirroul, North Wollongong and Wollongong.

SLSNSW has a contract with the DPI to provide drone surveillance at these beaches. “Feedback from the public is that they feel safer visiting a beach where there is a UAV service in operation,” the spokesperson said, adding that SLSNSW supports the increased use of mitigation measures such as drones, drumlines and tagging. 

The DPI also partners with Surfing NSW, providing medical kits, drones and training for boardriders clubs.

In response to the marine animal death toll, the NSW government has made some changes, such as more frequent net checks. In 2025, for the first time, nets will be pulled out one month early on 31 March, in response to increased turtle activity in April.

What ocean users think

Studying shark encounters opened Teaniel’s eyes to local views on mitigation measures.

“The majority of people that I spoke to were not in favour of the nets,” she said.

“But things like the tracking apps that they have for the tagged sharks, that’s not something that a lot of surfers are in favour of using either.

“A lot of the quotes I got from people were, ‘I know sharks are in the ocean’.

“Some of the ocean users, they’d have seen a shark once in 30 years, and then others have seen sharks 10, 15, 20 times. But that is dependent on where they’re going and the activities that they’re doing, and none of them have been bitten.”

Considering the number of people in the sea, fatal shark attacks are rare, she said.

“Nets are not at every beach. The further down the South Coast you go, there are no nets. People aren’t being bitten by sharks down there any more than they are up here. So what are the nets really doing?

“A lot of people that I’ve spoken to who have had encounters with sharks, they accept that that’s part of entering the water. It’s their territory. You enter the water and you take that risk, but that risk itself is really minimal. So why are we doing something that is so harmful when the risk is so small?”

Check out Teaniel’s website and her shark encounters map.