Sharks have always fueled panic in Australia. As scientific knowledge grows, conservation efforts may be overtaken by fear | Anna Clark

YoIs there a more primitive fear among bathers than the shark? Although many more Australians drown on the beach each year than die from these creatures, it is sharks that inhabit the jagged edges of our collective consciousness.

After a terrifying series of bites earlier this year, calls to cull sharks have resurfaced. Ocean swimming and surfing didn’t seem like the same healthy activities they had just a few months before.

The Australian Shark Incident Database records an increasing number of dangerous interactions with sharks in recent years. Anecdotal evidence also suggests an increase in unreported encounters. But no one knows exactly why.

The archives reveal that sharks have been a figure of fear and fascination throughout the human history of this continent. The Murujuga rock art site in Western Australia dates back tens of thousands of years and includes depictions of hammerhead and tiger sharks.

Across the continent, on the cliffs overlooking a First Nations fishing ground known as Murriverie, near Sydney’s Bondi Beach, carvings also depict shark motifs. One, which extends 8 meters along the sandstone outcrop, points towards an ancestral or human figure and is believed to represent a shark attack.

Early Europeans also noted the dangerous presence of sharks. William Dampier gave the name Sharks Bay to that part of the west coast in 1699 after being impressed by its “abundance”. When the First Fleet arrived in 1788, Officer Watkin Tench noticed “sharks of monstrous size” in Sydney Harbour.

An article from 1812 described a huge shark that was dissected to reveal an entire pelican inside.

More famous was the tiger shark captured alive off Coogee Beach in 1935, which, after a few days in captivity, regurgitated a tattooed human arm. Sydneysiders were horrified, but tests revealed the arm belonged to a murder victim and had been cut off and thrown away.

In the early 20th century, the growing popularity of surf baths also meant an increased risk of shark encounters. While the government recommended that surf lifesaving clubs be provided with first aid kits, swimmers were essentially responsible for managing their own safety.

A series of shark incidents in the 1920s changed all that. In Sydney in 1922, there were two fatal shark attacks in one month, and then another 13 on Sydney and Newcastle beaches between 1924 and 1934.

This amounted to an average of just one shark attack a year, as noted by the New South Wales Shark Threat Advisory Committee. But still, the public panicked.

The state government initially resisted large-scale shark mitigation, offering rewards for shark catches and advising beachgoers to avoid “bathing at dangerous times, in isolated places, and going too far away.”

Some municipalities adopted their own measures. At Coogee, huge steel cables and nets were strung from the center of the bay, cordoning off a large section of the beach. Swimming nets were also built at other protected beaches in Sydney, Port Phillip Bay and Perth.

Other proposals suggested shark baiting and bombing, giant bubble curtains, concrete barriers or electric fences, but all were rejected as impractical or untested. However, in the mid-1930s, after further attacks in Sydney, the main recommendation was the “systematic connection” of the city’s beaches.

The nets would not be complete enclosures, but rather would be placed parallel to the coast to capture and kill sharks. Without attacks in the following decades, the mesh spread to the beaches of Newcastle, the Central Coast and Wollongong. In the 1960s, Queensland also adopted a strategy of beach nets and baited drum lines.

There was no great opposition to these security measures during the middle decades of the 20th century. Public sentiment largely held that a good shark was a dead shark, and big game fishermen took on the challenge of catching monster sharks.

However, over time, the consequences of these strategies became clearer: shark mitigation and fishing were affecting entire ecosystems. Its effectiveness was now in doubt.

Scientists highlighted the importance of apex predators such as sharks as key species, critical to the health of marine ecosystems, although several of them are critically endangered. As more research was conducted, the language around our interactions also changed, from shark “attacks” to “incidents.”

Meanwhile, public responses to recent shark encounters show how fear can disrupt that shift toward conservation. Politicians are weighing scientific evidence and public safety, but in the absence of solid data, tension will only continue.

• Anna Clark is a professor of history at the University of Technology Sydney. He is writing a history of the beach in Australia (Penguin, 2027). He is a member of the Australian Historical Association.