shark nets are bad!!!

as far as i am concerned, shark attacks are just a risk of surfing, swimming etc. why cant we stop trying to tame and human-ize everything

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=...02259689C886970

That is because "we" come first. We want to do what we want when we want, it's a "right". And anything that impedes our fun be damned.

I've actually watched them pull the net up for the sardine run and the number of turtles, rays, sharks and dolphins are almost sickening. The guys have shown me video of extracting a humpback from the net... it is quite disheartening. But as the human population moves towards the sea, conservation efforts are going to be problematic at best.

Last summer I did an internship in Aquaculture down at U Miami. One of the things that we tested was the potential for the use of magnets to keep the sharks away from the fish cages. Sharks use the earth's magnetic field to navigate, and are extremely sensitive to magnets. When presented with a nice bloody tuna carcass, the sharks ate it... when presented with the same thing with a nice magnet on the hook too, they stayed away.

This could potentially be used instead of the nets. The thing that bothers me is that there are alternatives, that are possibly even more effective, and it seems to be in the human spirit to resent change.

By Neptune's beard!! It's hard to find anything positive coming from man's interaction with the sea!!What ever happened to the bubble net idea?

That all depends on if you are a whale or not....

LOL! Can we train a few humpies to screen the beach with bubbles? Wonder what their pay rate is in krill?

As long as the media jumps on every shark attack like its the 2nd coming of Jaws, they will keep the general uneducated public in fear. Thus the demand for "shark nets" will be high. I watched a show about the US shrimping industry the other day and how its shrimp techniques are strip mining the sea.