Shark cull: cruel and ineffective
Announcement posted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Australia 25 Sep 2018
Dear Editor,
We were all horrified to see two people being rushed to hospital after shark attacks in the Whitsundays last week, in an area that has been free of such incidents for a long time. But the response of the government has been a panicked, knee-jerk reaction – five sharks have been killed in the space of a week, with no evidence that any human has been made safer.
Sharks have inhabited the oceans for 34 million years, and have earned their right to live in their natural habitat without being hunted and killed. Last year, there were only five fatal shark attacks recorded globally, despite billions of people entering the oceans, often to do dangerous things. In Australia, an average of 280 people drown every year in our waterways, yet this receives far less paternalistic attention from the authorities.
Humans pose a far greater threat to sharks than they ever will to us. Every year, humans pull roughly 100 million sharks from the water, slice off their fins to make soup, and throw their mutilated bodies back into the sea to bleed slowly to death. Yet we are afraid of them?
Polls have consistently shown that an overwhelming number of Australians oppose culling of sharks. In almost every case of a shark attack, people are back in the water, often before the beaches are officially reopened, well aware that the sharks in the water prevent an infinitesimally smaller risk than that posed by driving their cars to the beach.
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577 416
desmondb@peta.org.au
We were all horrified to see two people being rushed to hospital after shark attacks in the Whitsundays last week, in an area that has been free of such incidents for a long time. But the response of the government has been a panicked, knee-jerk reaction – five sharks have been killed in the space of a week, with no evidence that any human has been made safer.
Sharks have inhabited the oceans for 34 million years, and have earned their right to live in their natural habitat without being hunted and killed. Last year, there were only five fatal shark attacks recorded globally, despite billions of people entering the oceans, often to do dangerous things. In Australia, an average of 280 people drown every year in our waterways, yet this receives far less paternalistic attention from the authorities.
Humans pose a far greater threat to sharks than they ever will to us. Every year, humans pull roughly 100 million sharks from the water, slice off their fins to make soup, and throw their mutilated bodies back into the sea to bleed slowly to death. Yet we are afraid of them?
Polls have consistently shown that an overwhelming number of Australians oppose culling of sharks. In almost every case of a shark attack, people are back in the water, often before the beaches are officially reopened, well aware that the sharks in the water prevent an infinitesimally smaller risk than that posed by driving their cars to the beach.
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577 416
desmondb@peta.org.au