Swellnet Dispatch Shark Activity in Victoria

In: Swellnet Dispatch by 17 Comments Fri 23rd Apr '10

Tags: white sharks , white tag , barry bruce , kent stannard , big left , shark sighting

Kent Stannard from Whitetag reports on recent shark activity down in Victoria...

Autumn on Victoria's coast is as good as it gets; the masses have returned to urban life and local surfers get to enjoy warm water and uncrowded waves. Free and easy....until last Friday.

I received a phone call from a Fisheries Officer late last week alerting me to a dead blue whale on the rocks at the entrance to the channel of Big Left at Flinders. This immediately sent the alarm bells ringing. Everybody is probably aware of the whale stranding on Rye Back Beach last Easter, it was well signed by the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) and warnings were issued that sharks could potentially be in the area, while unconfirmed reports filtered back of sightings, there was nothing bona fide.

This latest particular stranding, however, is of real concern and both surfers and divers should think twice before entering the water in this area. The reason I say this: last Friday afternoon, four surfers experienced their worst nightmare, including local identity Mick Pierce on his stand-up paddleboard. Anybody who knows Mick can testify he is the real deal, a hardened ocean user who doesn't take a backward step in or out of the water. They had paddled out through the channel and possibly unbeknown to them, through the centre of a berley trail of whale oil running way out to sea...never a wise move.

Anyone who surfs Big Left will know the vibe of the place at the best of times. It is a very long paddle out and an even longer paddle back in, and has that feel which makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, especially when sitting out there alone and taking in the scenery- similar to Seal Rocks a mere three or four km away....

Anyway, one of the surfers, Will, was lying on his board when he saw it - the fin - heading in his direction. As he recounted to me: "I screamed out to the other guys some twenty feet away, 'Shark, what do I do?' They replied - 'Stop paddling', which I did. I saw it coming from around the 11 o'clock position. It swam under the nose of my board and I will never forget that moment...the black eye checking me out as it swam past...I watched as it turned and came back around from the 4 o'clock position and swam directly under the middle of my board. Then it did a u turn and was heading back, it flicked its tail, there was a massive swish of water and it was gone"

I haven't spoken with Mick as yet but, apparently he was standing up and had a birds eye view of the whole episode until he fell to his knees! The four then caught waves back toward shore, which sounds nothing out of the ordinary, but, they still had the two hundred or so metres of channel to cover before reaching terra firma. The shark was not sighted again. Will, deeply affected by the encounter, is still looking for answers: "Why didn't it attack me?"

The point of this story is not to dramatise the situation, but to point out a number of facts.

I was over at Flinders on Sunday and the berley trail from the rotting carcass was drifting kilometres out to sea. To my horror, there were guys surfing a mere two hundred or so metres away. I can only assume they were not aware of what had transpired on the Friday. So here are some words of advice based on scientific observations at whale strandings. Our partner at CSIRO and Australia's leading white shark authority Barry Bruce commented when told of the sequence of events at Flinders and Will's question...

"Will was very lucky. White sharks in the vicinity of a stranded whale carcass can become extremely aggressive. So people should NEVER swim, surf or dive near a dead decomposing whale. Large whales may take months to decompose and during that period, the carcass may continue to attract sharks to the area. We encountered three white sharks just off the site of eight stranded sperm whales in Western Australia in 2003. Two of these sharks checked out our run-about in a very similar fashion to what Will described; the third one was just plain angry and after a couple of circles charged and rammed the bottom of the boat with such force that we were knocked off our feet. The following day a large shark circled a small dinghy with four beefy blokes in it. They asked me for advice...I told them to go back to shore and play beach cricket for the rest of the day!"

"The question why sharks do, or do not, attack is an interesting one. White sharks have exceptional eyesight, sense of smell and can detect electrical fields produced by living things in seawater. They can be bold and inquisitive. Sharks vary in their motivation to attack - maybe because they have recently fed, maybe they have good and bad days - but not every encounter will end in an attack and not every attack seems to be for feeding."

"There are many examples of surfers being approached by large white sharks and not getting touched, or bumped, or if bitten, they come away with less injury than you might expect - relative to the size and power of the attacking shark. This gives some confidence to the advice for maintaining watch on the shark and at first opportunity to leave the area with as minimum fuss as possible. Which is exactly what Will and his mates did. White sharks of any size, but particularly anything over two metres, should be treated with the utmost respect. They are potentially very dangerous but this does not mean they will always attack. However, the presence of a near-by dead whale can be more than enough to get white sharks fired up and that is a dangerous situation for local water users."

The area in and around Westernport, including Seal Rocks, appears significant for white sharks using the Bass Strait corridor. We know fish such as snapper and gummy shark return on a seasonal basis to the upper reaches of Westernport to reproduce. This combined with the local fur seal population at Seal Rocks makes it an ideal environment for white sharks to hang out at certain times of the year.

Currently, our not for profit organisation 'Tag For Life' is putting together a research project to examine the movements of white sharks in Bass Strait including the Westernport Bay area, the eastern zone around Corner Inlet and the western sector from Port Fairy to Portland. Stay tuned for further updates as they come to hand, including tracks from sharks tagged at the Port Stephens area last October.

Enjoy Autumn.

Kent Stannard
Whitetag

All photos taken last Easter at Rye Back Beach by Alex Zadnik