NSW beaches to get dawn-to-dusk drone patrols in $34m anti-shark program | New South Wales

Shark-detecting drones will fly from dawn to dusk year-round at 70 beaches in New South Wales under an expanded monitoring programme, the state government said.

NSW premier Chris Minns said the $34 million initiative would restore beachgoers’ confidence after a series of shark sightings and attacks. These include one belonging to a great white shark belonging to Sydney mother Leah Stewart, who is no longer in a critical condition following an attack on Coogee beach earlier this month.

“While no one can promise there will be no shark interactions, this investment is about putting more eyes in the sky so we can detect sharks earlier and give people a clear warning when they are in the water,” Minns said Sunday.

The 70 beaches covered year-round from July 1 will include 38 of Sydney’s ocean beaches, as well as 32 beaches in the rest of the state.

The expanded program also promises daily flights from December 1 to April 30, flights every weekend throughout the year and extended daily flight hours, as well as more drone monitoring at other regional beaches.

It will be carried out by Surf Life Saving NSW, which already undertakes drone surveillance along the coast, including an existing school holiday drone programme.

Steve Pearce, the organisation’s chief executive, said drones were already a “highly effective component” of the state’s shark management programme, having “detected and prevented more than 2000 sharks from interacting with swimmers and surfers and more than 100,000 flybys this year alone”.

The funding will include trials of new artificial intelligence shark detection systems, which it is hoped will pave the way for automated flights in the summer.

University of Sydney shark policy expert Assoc. Christopher Pepin-Neff said the planned use of artificial intelligence was “ambitious and bold”.

“But we need to be realistic about what drones can and cannot do,” they said. “More drones in the air means there will be more discussion of sharks off Australian beaches.

“We should treat the beach like a bush. This is wilderness.”

While coverage is not limited to patrolled beaches, it will not be carried out at every beach in the state. The 70 beaches that will benefit from year-round drone monitoring, including at least one beach in every coastal local government area, include those with the highest numbers of swimmers and surfers.

Year-round drone monitoring in Sydney will expand from 26 ocean beaches to all 38 ocean beaches, from Palm Beach in the north to Cronulla in the south. Two SharkSmart listening stations in Sydney harbor will warn swimmers of tagged sharks.

The prime minister has resisted calls to cull, including great white sharks, a protected species, after a spate of attacks, some fatal, in the past 12 months.

Minns told Sky News on Sunday morning: “That’s the distances [white] “The journey of sharks is huge.”

“We can’t kill a few people and send a message to the rest.”

Pepin-Neff agreed. “White sharks are offshore, so they travel all over the ocean, they don’t travel together,” they said.

“Tuesday’s white shark may be from New Zealand and Wednesday’s white shark may be from Queensland… so culling would not have any impact on them.”

Minns said it was “a different situation for bull sharks” and not a protected species, and that the government was “looking at all those measures.”

“We are looking specifically at an audit of the number of sharks in Sydney harbour.”

But Pepin-Neff said there was “zero evidence to support shark culls as a way to make beaches safer.”