The Western Australian Shark Cull Inititative

“The Misunderstood Shark” was written by Gregory Skomal, a biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and shark fanatic. His article was published by The Wall Street Journal on August 7, 2015. The engaging title, itself grabs the reader’s attention, making the reader feel sympathetic towards the shark. Upon hearing the word, “shark”, an individual may cringe. The author makes a solid claim that our attitudes about sharks are changing, but not towards direction it needs to be. He supports his argument with strong appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos throughout the article.

In the essay “Marine Parks”, Bill Daly The Power of Critical Thinking. 3rd Lewis Vaughn and Chris McDonald. Daly’s main claim is that marine parks, housing dolphins, whales, seals, and other marine mammals, have become a contentious issue. He explains the views of these problems set out to prevent the necessity of theses harsh institutions. Bill gathers a variety of different arguments from other people that argue on the critical issue of having marine parks open or closed; many arguments, for and against, maintaining such parks, range from the economic and scientific value of such places, to the cruel and in-necessary conditions the mammals are forced to endure. Below I intend to present a couple such arguments and introduce some critical evaluations, explanations, and my personal opinions.

In Australia, sharks kill an average of three people every year. In Queensland 2017, to counter this, 667 sharks were culled to protect human’s safety on Australian beaches along with 100 accidental deaths of turtles, dolphins and dugongs. This was done with no scientific evidence to support that culling would work. All over the world 90% of shark species are threatened to become extinct with people killing 273 million sharks every year. This is why we must ban and make sure shark culling stops and never ever starts again. Shark culling is ludicrous, you have more of a chance dying from a coconut falling on you than a shark attack, coconuts actually kill 150 people every year does this mean we are going to kill all the coconuts? Here are a few arguments why shark culling must stop.

Sharks are vicious creatures and eat humans. Don’t go into the water if you see a shark nearby or they will come after you. These are a few of the many things you will hear from the television or even people you may know. Humans are not a part of the shark diet so it is highly unlikely that a shark would randomly go after a human. The media likes to make their shark stories more exciting by adding words like “aggressive” or “threatened.” There was a total of 4 deaths caused by sharks in 2014 which is a large contrast to the 11,417 sharks that are killed per hour by humans. sharks) need to be preserved and protected in order to preserve our oceans. Laws that are more strict should be implemented in order to achieve this goal.

Arising over 350 million years ago, the shark species has been labeled as a human devourer. Now, with the increase in human population, the demand for shark meat, fins, and cartilage are at an all time high; therefore, the existence of the shark is becoming a concern (Budker 1971). Individuals are conditioned to think of sharks as a negative aspect to the environment, which is prolonging the effort to save shark species from becoming extinct. With that in mind, some private as well as national organizations have accepted the challenge of educating and informing people about the existence of the shark specie and its importance to the sea.

The fourth component is disproportionality. According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s article (2009), the author remarked that moral panic is existed if there is a disproportion between the action taken and the actual threat formed by the indicted group. It signifies that the shark attacks and the response from WA in this case. In order to prevent the threat from sharks, the WA government responded the shark cull to protect swimmers and surfers from attack. In actuality, the number of shark attacks worldwide each year is very low. There were 80 unprovoked shark attacks on people worldwide in 2012, fourteen of these were occurred in Australia whereas only two attacks were fatal (ABC 2015). In contrast, Surf Life Saving South Australia stated

Is shark culling okay given the number of shark attacks that have occurred? Recently it seems that the number of shark attacks has increased with seven fatal attacks in the past 3 years in Western Australia (WA). These recent attacks have led the WA Government being granted an exemption to start culling sharks with a catch-and-kill shark program. A lot of people including scientists and surfers are against this controversial decision. For people to make an informed decision they need to have an understanding of where the shark fits into the marine ecosystem, as well as the reasons presented for the use of shark culling and the arguments given that oppose such extreme measures.

Whenever you go to the Fish and Chips shop, have you heard about “Flake”? Flakes are a type of shark. They have been killed just for us to eat. The price of them are also increasing. At least 100 million sharks are killed every year. In Eastern parts of Asia, Sharks were being culled for shark fin soup. Dragging out the sharks out of the ocean and cutting off their fins and throwing their dead body back into the ocean is unacceptable. How would you feel if we were dragged out of our home by a random person, got our arm cut off and got put back into our home again? I’m sure that we would all be horrified and terrified by this. It is said that Shark Fin Soup costs around $100 per bowl of soup. There are also some countries that have completely banned shark culling. They are Israel, Ecuador, Mexico, Egypt, Indonesia, Fiji and so on. It is very unfortunate that Australia isn’t a part of this. Sharks also help with ecosystems.

The purpose of this paper is intended to summarize my views on what has influenced my understanding of politics and government prior to taking this class, and how my understanding is now since completing this course.

People visceral when they see a shark and they try to capture and kill it. Only some people want to protect sharks. Sharks help by keeping the fish population down First, we can protect sharks by doing little things such as stop finning sharks, picking up our trash. Next people destroy environments by oil spills. Not picking up trash. Last if people don’t stop finning sharks and not throwing their trash away our environment will smell bad and we will have no sharks left.

To this day, many of us still see them this way. In fact, coastal states stared to host shark culling events. In these sometime month-long events, a state government will pay any fishermen to bring in a freshly killed shark generous amounts of money. Peter Benchley, the author of "Jaws" doesn't support shark culling, he in fact helped raise awareness about sharks becoming endangered. He wrote articles about how misunderstood sharks are (Benchley, Peter). This is now illegal in the United States, but is still practiced in countries such as Japan and Australia. Even in those countries, shark culling is on its way out. But

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s article “The Brutal Business of Shark Finning” reminds us that sharks play a key role in the ocean as both predators and scavengers.

Beginning with the simplest one-celled organism, an extraordinary animal rose in the murky waters entitled to a non-comparable killing-eating machine. This organism has become nature’s most genuine and most successful creature that it has remained unchanged for over 250 million years. Nature finally invented the perfect king of the sea. This animal has given the sea it’s “living” adjective; in turn, it was entitled—the “great white shark.”

WA Labor opposes to the cull and catching of sharks after an attack as the evidence does not suggest it will actually prevent shark attacks. The strategy is likely to result, in yet again, the death of other marine species including dolphins, turtles, and non-threatening shark species and may in fact increase the risk to swimmers by attracting sharks

More and more people have been introduced to a very dangerous practice called shark-finning. Even the people who are aware of the harmful effects they bring still continue on doing it. People are afraid of sharks due to their fierce appearance and the bad publicity they get such as the movies wherein sharks attack humans. Only about 5 people are killed by sharks every year. In fact, vending machines has a higher death rate of 13, while ants can kill about 30 people annually. Sharks are very beneficial to us, why do people keep on harming them? Why is shark-finning so important? Shark-finning gives both advantages and disadvantages economically, politically, cultural, societal, and environmental. It is important to recognize the