There was a fatal accident involving a shark. Then politics trawled a tragedy

Between hundreds of thousands of sessions, Boardrides every year in Sydney, many of them were the first death of shark during the winter, so far. . First. Every year there was a ninth deadly shark bite between millions of surfing sessions in NSW. Including swimmers, Australian Shark-Ensitsice databaseThere have been 55 deaths in Sydney in 237 years since the white settlement. Thirteen were on the ocean beach.

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In Sydney, shark Netting supporters say the absence of so -called shark “attacks” since the entrance of Nets in 1937. However, this is to give the mystery of causality to the randomness of mathematics.

I feel sorry for scientists who have devoted careers to accumulating and analyzing information, which confirmed that thousands of sharks swim every day on thousands of sharks, but it allows her work to be overthrown at a time when she saw the opportunity to use the emotions of politics.

Contrary to science, politics is about to produce control and security illusions. The “zero tolerance” response is designed to meet the expectation that the government can stop every accident of nature. Spring is loaded to see a part of the public as killers that can be stopped and should be stopped. Political stance is to offer “power :: put a few dozen napkins there.

The shark hysteria is a repetitive life theme in Sydney. The author published by Vick Hastrich The last days of Zane GrayIn the 1930s, the world -renowned writer, “Hollywood Legend” and the story of the shark hysteria that brought the big game fisherman here to hunt a big white shark and make a movie about it White death. “The creatures hated quite simple,” he writes, “Creatures hated it very simple,” after a swimmer was taken at Manly Beach. Gray himself believed that a human life saved a human life when he said, “He abandoned the Sharks and killed each one”. 10 mattresses were paid for each shark they caught for port fishermen who aimed to eliminate species.

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Gray’s Australian adventure turned into a hairy -breasted competition to land the largest monster. Gray for all his efforts could not catch one for the film, but later tied a “killing machine ve in Southern Australia, when he was only turned upside down when he looked at his“ death face ”and“ he had to imagine himself as meat ”.

The story of Zane Gray evokes a time in which people imagine themselves as heroes in the human-dobbal competition. However, legend has proved to be resistant, and politics lasts more than science to legends. Jaws It doubled in 1975, and Chris Minns is like a cautious repeat of the Mayor of Amity Island.

According to the CSIRO summary of the published research, although the renewal of white shark stocks since the bans of fishing in 1996, any increase in shark bites in the last decades of shark bite “increasing human population, more people visiting beaches, a water -based fitness and recreation activities and the previously isolated coastal areas”. Mercury Psillakis’s family said that “the ocean is aware of the risks of the ocean”, which will be one of the less sharks. His death was not a crime, it was an accident.

For a moment, I do not doubt that politicians are sincere when they say that they respect the grief. However, sometimes respect can be expressed in restriction. Sometimes they do not have to reflect the “power” image. Sometimes they could only listen to science. Sometimes it’s not about them. Sometimes they can remain silent. Otherwise, they cannot find themselves on the territory of any human being as soon as they open their mouths. And yes, the same applies to the media, so I’m going to be silent now.

Malcolm Knox is a journalist, writer and columnist. Sydney Morning Herald.