March 1 - 31, 2025: Issue 640

 

Shark Nets to Come out Monday March 31 Due to Increased Turtle Migrations + Research: Green lights on fishing nets could slash bycatch of sea turtles + Record number of sea turtle nests rescued before cyclone

Shark nets are in place at 51 beaches from Newcastle to Wollongong. (Supplied: Humane World for Animals Australia)

On August 1st 2024, the NSW Government announced they would shorten the shark net season by one month because of the toll on endangered turtles. 

That announcement has been followed by another this week about how many turtles were saved after a rapid response team involving the NSW Government rescued a record number of eggs from North Coast beaches in the lead up to Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred (see report below).

The government also made statements that they would include councils and local communities in the decision-making process regarding the continuation of shark nets on their beaches. 

In April 2021 our local Council called on the NSW government to remove shark nets on beaches in the Council area and replace them with a combination of modern and effective alternative shark mitigation strategies that maintain or improve swimmer safety and reduce unwanted by-catch of non-target species. 

Council made the call in response to Department of Primary Industries – Fisheries (DPI Fisheries) request for input from stakeholders on their preferred shark mitigation measures, following a five-year project considering the benefits and impacts of a range of mitigation measures.  

A number of residents addressed Council’s April 2021 meeting in support of shark net removal, including surfing champion Layne Beachley. 

Then A/Mayor Candy Bingham said Council considered both the need to maintain or improve swimmer safety as well as the negative impacts on non-target marine species in reaching their decision.

“The effectiveness of shark nets has been questioned by many, yet their impact on other marine species is devastating,” Cr Bingham said. 

“We have an aquatic reserve in Manly where turtles and rays are regularly seen by snorkelers, and up and down the beaches dolphins surf the waves alongside local board riders. 

“The research conducted by DPI Fisheries found that 90% of marine species caught in nets were non-target species and that sharks can in fact swim over, under and around the nets anyhow. 

“If the evidence is that there are other just as, or more, effective ways to mitigate shark risk, such as drone and helicopter surveillance, listening stations and deterrent devices, then we owe it to those non-target species to remove the nets. We will be providing that feedback through this consultation process and look forward to the government implementing effective shark mitigation measures while protecting other important marine species.”

On March 3 2022 a unanimous resolution was passed by Local Government NSW that requested that the NSW Government phases out the use of shark nets. The historic motion also asked that the shark nets are replaced with a combination of alternatives that protect swimmers more effectively and do not harm marine wildlife.

In January 2025 Newcastle City Council withdrew support for shark nets at its six local beaches, joining six other NSW councils — Wollongong, Sutherland, Waverley, Northern Beaches, Central Coast, and Lake Macquarie — in rejecting their use. 

On February 25 2025 Randwick Council voted 'no' to the continued use of shark nets, meaning none of the eight councils with shark nets support their continued use.  

The Shark Management Program for the coming summer, released on August 1st 2024, included a suite of new measures to be trialled, which will increase protections for marine life while shark nets remain in use, the government stated. 

The government's Shark Smart website states:

'The NSW Government’s Shark Meshing (Bather Protection) Program includes 51 beaches between Newcastle and Wollongong. In accordance with the 2024 Management Plan for the program, the nets will be removed on 31 March.'

These beaches are netted by contractors using specially designed meshing nets to reduce the chances of interactions with White, Tiger and Bull Sharks, collectively referred to as ‘target sharks’ of shark mitigation in NSW.

The nets do not create a total barrier between people and sharks. They are designed to intercept target sharks near meshed beaches to reduce the chance of an interaction.

While the nets cannot provide a guarantee that an interaction will never happen, they have reportedly reduced the rate of interactions.

Shark nets are fitted with acoustic warning devices, such as dolphin pingers and whale alarms to deter and minimise the risk of entanglement to those marine mammals.

According to the Australian Shark Incident Database (ASID, formerly known as the Australian Shark Attack File – October 2024), 35 unprovoked shark interactions have reportedly occurred at netted beaches of the SMP, 17 of which involved White Sharks, a target species for the program. Other interactions at meshed beaches were with Wobbegong Sharks (12), unknown species of sharks (3), and unidentified Whaler Sharks (3).

The 2024/25 Program includes a suite of new measures to be trialled, which will increase protections for marine life whilst shark nets remain in use, including:

  • Removing shark nets one month earlier, on 31 March 2025, to respond to increased turtle activity in April (from 1989 - 2024 nets came out on 30 April).
  • Increasing the frequency of net inspections by the net contractors during February and March from every third day to every second day.
  • Using SLS NSW drones to inspect the nets during March on the days the net Contractors aren’t inspecting, effectively providing daily net inspections.
  • Trial of lights on nets to deter turtles and prevent their entanglement (February-March 2025).

The reminder of the shark net removals come as sustained warm waters and the state government's listening stations, in place at North Narrabeen, Palm Beach  and North Steyne, transmitting to the SharkSmart app and supporting webpages, monitor tagged sharks and residents report an increased presence of these.

See: It's a 'Bit Sharky' out there: 5 Tagged Bull Sharks Pinged at North Narrabeen on Same Day - Bull Shark spotted at Bayview + some historical insights into Sharks in the estuary and along our beaches (March 10-16 2025 Issue 640 - Week 3)

''‘Shark nets do not work the way many people assume they do. They are not a barrier to the open ocean but are merely 150m long and six metres high and are anchored in 12m of water a few hundred metres from shore. 

Logic will tell you that any shark can swim over, under or around a net, particularly at a beach like Maroubra which stretches for about a kilometre,’ said Lawrence Chlebeck, a marine biologist and shark expert with Humane World for Animals Australia (formerly Humane Society International Australia), on Monday March 24 2025

To prove the point, almost half of the sharks caught in the shark nets are caught on the beach side of the net, HWAA states

The Shark Meshing (Bather Protection) Program 2023-24 Annual Performance Report, released August 1st 2024, recorded a total of 255 marine animals were caught in the SMP during the 2023/24 meshing season, comprised of 15 target sharks and 240 non-target animals. Ninety-two animals (36%) were released alive.

Those listed under 'Sydney North'- our region, and which now omitted for the first time where, specifically, each animals died - records 44 non-target species were caught in local nets:

  • White Shark 1
  • Bronze Whaler 2
  • Dusky Whaler 2
  • Smooth Hammerhead Shark 10 - 56 of the 57 caught in all nets were found dead. 26 were caught in the nets at Central Coast north and 17 at Central Coast south.
  • Greynurse Shark 3. 6 of the 14 caught died. 157 of these species have been caught in the nets dating from the 2013/14 program onwards according to the report (Threatened species entanglements for 2013/14 to 2023/24 - page 30.)
  • Southern Eagle Ray 4
  • Australian Cownose Ray 15 - the highest amount caught in any of the nets
  • Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin - 3 - 4 out of he 5 caught in all nets were found dead
  • Green Turtle - 1. 8 of the 13 caught died.
  • Leatherback Turtle - 2. 5 of the 11 caught overall were found dead.
  • Longtail Tuna - 1

The Shark Meshing (Bather Protection) Program 2022/23 Annual Performance Report records 34 non-target species were caught in shark nets in our area during the reporting period - of that number 21 died before they could be released. None of these caught locally were target shark species.

Two of these were deaths of Loggerhead turtles, one at Mona Vale and one at Narrabeen, a species listed as Endangered in NSW and at Australian Commonwealth Government level. Loggerhead turtles nest from late October, reaching a peak in late December and finish nesting in late February or early March.

Mona Vale's net also led to the drowning death of a Green Turtle, listed as Vulnerable in NSW and at Australian Commonwealth Government level. In recent years species of turtles nesting locally - Green Turtle eggs were found at North Steyne in January 2020 and more recently the Listed as Endangered Loggerhead Turtle eggs were found at Shelly Beach on the Central Coast in January 2023.

“If we truly want to put people’s safety first, then we need to stop putting our trust in 100-year-old technology and start relying on modern safety measures” he said. 

Shark nets were introduced to Sydney beaches in 1937. 

The nets, not to be confused with netted enclosures at harbour beaches, are located off 51 beaches between Newcastle and Wollongong. In the most recent figures, from 2023, only 15 targeted sharks—white, tiger, and bull—were caught in the nets. The remaining 240 animals included turtles, rays, dolphins and harmless sharks. 

Nets on Sydney beaches caught zero target sharks during the 22/23 shark net season and only three the following (23/24) season. During that time, those same nets caught 124 rays, turtles, dolphins and smaller sharks, essentially ringing the dinner bell for larger animals, HWA states

“There is no point in just feeling safe, we actually need to be safe. Shark nets don’t keep us safe. No one wants to see a harmless ray, dolphin or a turtle killed in a net,’ Chlebeck said, ‘but unfortunately it is happening most days. We also know that vulnerable species like the grey nurse shark are regularly entangled and even Sydney’s little penguins.  

HWA Australia has also stated images from within the NSW Shark Meshing Program (SMP) and obtained by them under Freedom of Information, show that large sharks have fed on animals caught in the nets, proving a long-held theory that dead and dying animals in the nets attract sharks.  

'The images are consistent with a 2020 report from James Cook University for the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries which outlines several guidelines to mitigate shark bite.'

One of those guidelines is to, ‘not swim or surf near shark nets.’ 

‘This is dangerously ironic for a public safety measure,’ said Lawrence Chlebeck

‘Shark nets are intended to capture target sharks, but their inherent design flaw is that they mostly catch other marine animals,’ he said.  

‘As sharks are attracted to struggling prey, a shark net is akin to ringing a dinner bell for any shark in the area, and those nets are placed right near swimmers and surfers with the assumption that they keep us safe.’  

The sharks targeted by the SMP are migratory species—white, tiger, and bull. They travel vast distances around our coastline, and are attracted to activity, scent, and when they sense animals in distress.  

‘This is a huge price to pay for a misguided assumption of safety. There is no point in just feeling safe, we actually need to be safe. Shark nets don’t keep us safe. They kill indiscriminately and offer nothing more than a false sense of security,’ Mr. Chlebeck said. 

‘Let’s stop arguing with emotion and let’s start looking at the science. Our safety depends on it, and so do the lives of innocent marine life.’ 

Record number of sea turtle nests rescued before cyclone

March 27, 2025

Hundreds of baby sea turtles have been released into the ocean, after a rapid response team involving the NSW Government rescued a record number of eggs from North Coast beaches in the lead up to Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

Trained staff and volunteers from NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and NSW TurtleWatch undertook the state’s largest-ever relocation of turtle eggs from nine beaches between Tweed Heads and south of Port Macquarie, to save nests before huge waves inundated them.

More than 1,000 eggs from nine endangered loggerhead turtle nests were carefully relocated into nine incubators. Seven of the incubators were 45-litre eskies fitted with sand, heat pads, thermostats and temperature monitors.

The huge operation was incredibly delicate, ensuring the eggs maintained their original vertical orientation during transportation and the incubators remained at 26.5 degrees Celsius.

After a ten day wait, the first eggs hatched, and 317 turtle hatchlings were successfully released at North Kingscliff and Seven Mile beaches, followed by more at Wooli Beach.

This week, 51 turtle hatchlings were released at North Haven Beach, 19 days after being rescued. Another 121 hatchlings were released at Fingal Head Beach.

Four turtle nests remain in incubators and wildlife rehabilitators are keeping a close eye-out for cracked shells and emerging hatchlings.

A tenth clutch at Casuarina Beach was rescued in situ, and hatchlings were released that same day.

Turtle hatchlings are released at low tide to allow turtles to run down the beach – an important part of natal homing for these threatened species. They will swim across the Pacific Ocean and up the South American coast, before returning to eastern Australia in years to come, to lay their own nests.

The pre-cyclone rapid rescue operation was the largest on record in NSW in terms of numbers of nests, eggs and incubators and the spread of beaches.

The 2024-25 summer was also record-breaking, becoming NSW’s biggest turtle nesting season. A total of 18 sea turtle nests were found on beaches, up from 13 last summer.

This season saw the greatest community involvement ever in nest monitoring, thanks to NSW TurtleWatch volunteers, who monitored more than 2,700 kilometres of coastline and conducted more than 739 beach patrols.

Turtles were collected over summer by wildlife organisations including FAWNA, WIRES and NPWS, and taken to licensed wildlife rehabilitation organisations such as Australian Seabird and Turtle Rescue, Byron Bay Wildlife Hospital, Irukandji at Port Stephens and Coffs Coast Wildlife Sanctuary.

Loggerhead turtles were declared endangered in NSW in 2001. The NSW Government runs programs such as TurtleWatch to help protect them.

Minister for the Environment, Penny Sharpe said:

“Thank you to our citizen scientists and volunteers who found the nests by monitoring beaches for turtle tracks, the rapid response team who worked tirelessly to rescue and relocate the nests, and wildlife rehabilitators who helped care for and release these tiny baby turtles.

“It takes a community to care for and protect these vulnerable animals, and the community has delivered.”

NSW TurtleWatch Project Officer, Merryn Dunleavy said:

“More than 300 hours were spent on the beach monitoring, rescuing and relocating these eggs in the lead up to now Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred. Our team worked around the clock in heavy rain, waves and wild and windy conditions, to ensure these nests could be relocated to safety.

“Each of our nests are very loved by our local communities so it was great to confirm to them that the nests had been rescued and will now have a chance at survival.

“For our rescued nests that have already hatched, we have seen hatching success rates between 85 and 96 per cent.”

Two loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) hatchlings, North Haven Beach. Image Credit: N Brookhouse

Green lights on fishing nets could slash bycatch of sea turtles, says research

Robin Snape, University of Exeter

Bycatch in fishing gear is one of the biggest threats to sea turtles. But these creatures are particularly sensitive to green light so they’re less likely to get caught up in fishing nets fitted with green LED lights.

Since 2014, a team of marine biologists and I have been trialling ways to reduce turtle bycatch using lights in nets as a deterrent. Our recent study shows that these lights can reduce bycatch by approximately 40%.

The adult green turtles I work with in Cyprus are over a metre long and weigh more than 100kg. The females nest and lay their eggs on Alagadi beach, but only one in a thousand of their tiny hatchlings will survive to adulthood decades later.

Once they have left their nesting beach, young green turtles often wash up dead. Thousands of turtles are killed annually due to the activities of the Turkish Cypriot fleet alone.

With fish stocks in decline, fishers are using more nets to catch more fish – making bycatch more likely. That effectively negates any conservation efforts to help protect the young green turtles that feed on the coastal seagrass beds.

In this part of the Mediterranean Sea, fishers leave kilometres of net on the seabed overnight in these seagrass habitats. When they haul them in the morning they often find drowned turtles entangled.

But quantifying bycatch is not easy, especially in Cyprus, where hundreds of small fishing boats use different types of fishing gear. It’s even harder to identify the most dangerous fishing methods and prioritise possible solutions.

Together with local fishers and marine authorities, we have monitored impacts on marine life by deploying onboard observers and having fishers report their catches of dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, rays and monk seals.

The first lights we trialled were effective, and Cypriot fishers corroborated the positive results from trials in Mexico. But they found these prototypes difficult to use, with moving metal parts that got tangled in the “set nets”.

These long panels of net which fishers deploy on the seabed are stored in buckets. Due to tangling, the lights needed to be attached and removed on every fishing trip.

They’d often stop working and were not specifically designed for these set nets. At US$40 (£30) per light, the cost of fitting 3km of net is US$12,000. That’s way more than the annual cost of replacing nets that have been cut to release turtles that have got caught.

To make this concept more feasible, we teamed up with Devon-based marine engineering company FishTek in 2018 to develop a scalable solution. After years of trials, we developed a more efficient solution known as NetLights, which costs just US$8 per light.

Net illumination

These battery-powered lights that can be easily attached to huge fishing nets reduce bycatch of turtles by around 40%. But more trials are needed.

Because the green turtles living around the Cyprus coast keep dying, there aren’t that many of them, so catch rates remain low. Over time, more trials will provide more accurate results.

Thousands of NetLights have been made available to 50 fishers in Cyprus as part of a broader trial. Most are pleased with the target catch rates and ask for more. They’d be most likely to use them if costs are subsidised or if bycatch reduction tech like this is made a legal requirement to safeguard turtles from particular types of fishing net.

Every fisher uses a slightly different net set up and it’s hard to please them all. Ideally, the lights need to be slightly smaller, lighter and more buoyant so that they can replace the floats that fishers use to stand the nets in the water, without adding more bulk.

Other solutions

Aside from training fishers to rescue turtles that get entangled, other existing bycatch reduction methods include turtle excluder devices that fit inside the neck of trawl nets. While small fish and shrimp can pass between the bars to the back of the net, larger turtles bump against the metal grid and can escape through a flap in the mesh net.

In the US, bottom trawlers catching shrimp have to use turtle excluder devices to provide an escape route for turtles and other large objects.

Circular fishing hooks which replace “J” shaped hooks are less likely to snag turtles. These have been rolled out in large-scale commercial tuna and swordfish fleets on the high seas. But their success has been variable and in some cases reduced target catch can make them economically unsustainable.

If not enforced by governments, measures like these may be requested from supermarkets as part of a bycatch audit to promote best practice within the supply chain.

In 2023, fisheries policy in northern Cyprus was updated to include some no-take zones and restricted areas to protect fish stocks and other vulnerable species. If properly enforced, both the sea turtles and the fish that fishers rely on will benefit from these measures.

By rolling out more NetLights in set net fisheries that are a top priority for bycatch management, and monitoring their effectiveness against the baseline data we now have, there is huge scope to improve the chance of survival for green turtles.

Robin Snape, Associate Researcher, Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Some of the previous PON reports

Green Turtle Eggs Found Here To Head North

January 10, 2020: From Northern Beaches Police Area Command Facebook page - Inbox and Environment News Issue 434

Pre-dawn this morning at North Steyne as a close to full moon was setting, a green turtle laboured its way up the sand. Just south of the surf club she dug a nest, laid her eggs, carefully covered them up and headed back to sea. The only sign she'd been there, two sets of tracks in the sand.


Tracks up the sand and back to sea

With virtually no chance of the baby turtles surviving this far south, crews from Taronga Zoo and National Parks came to the beach and carefully retrieved the eggs for relocation to a more suitable environment.

The exercise saw the two teams carefully dig until the nest was found, 37cm down. Each egg was removed, numbered and laid out in rows of ten. From there they were packed in coolers, complete with sand from the nest to be transported to a beach much further north. There, a hole of identical depth will be dug and each egg placed, one-by-one, in its new home. That way, any female turtles that hatch will return to lay their eggs closer to that beach rather than one of the busiest stretches of sand in Sydney.


The dig begins


Each egg carefully numbered 

Crews found 144 of the white, ping pong ball sized eggs, their shells still soft and leathery. They say incidents of turtles laying their eggs so far south are extremely rare. The eggs have been carefully placed in sand at an undisclosed location near Coffs Harbour, where they were more likely to hatch.

The eggs will be will be monitored by NSW TurtleWatch Citizen Science Nesting Program volunteers alongside local rangers to ensure predators don't take the eggs, and keep an eye out for signs that the turtles are hatching, which will happen in about two months time.

Shark Drumlines Going In Off Our Beaches 

Another 3 month trial of SMART drumlines will be carried out across northern Sydney beaches from 30 August – 1 December 2019.
This trial will repeat the previous trial carried out at the start of 2019.

SMART drumlines were placed across two areas near existing shark nets to compare how this new technology performs at:
Barrenjoey to Newport beaches at Palm, Whale, Avalon, Bilgola and Newport; and
Dee Why to Manly beaches at Dee Why, Curl Curl, Freshwater, Queenscliff and Manly.

For more information on the trial, read the Barrenjoey to Newport fact sheet (PDF, 13889.89 KB) and the Dee Why to Manly fact sheet(PDF, 13084.33 KB).

The NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) is trialling 10 SMART (Shark-Management-Alert-InReal-Time) drumlines across Sydney beaches from 30 August - 1 December 2019.

Each day, 10 SMART drumlines will be set in the morning and collected in the evening (weather dependent) across Each day, 10 SMART drumlines will be set in the morning and collected in the evening (weather dependent) across Palm, Whale, Avalon, Bilgola and
Newport beaches, as well as Dee Why, Curl Curl, Freshwater, Queenscliff and Manly beaches, located near existing shark nets to compare how this new technology performs. They are not left out overnight.

SMART drumlines are new technology that allow target sharks to be intercepted beyond the surf break; once caught, they are tagged and relocated 1km offshore.

‘Target sharks’ are White, Bull and Tiger sharks as they are the species mainly involved in shark bites in NSW.
Currently, DPI is successfully trialling 35 SMART drumlines between Evans Head and Lennox Head and has completed trials at Coffs Harbour, Forster, Kiama, and Ulladulla.

Trials in NSW have shown that SMART drumlines are effective at managing target sharks with minimal impact on the marine environment. Reports from other trials can be found on our website at dpi.nsw.gov.au/drumlines

DPI manages the NSW Government’s five-year Shark Management Strategy. SMART drumlines are one of the new technologies that are being trialled for shark management along with drones and helicopters for aerial surveillance.

This is the first time SMART drumlines will be trialled in Sydney and will complement the NSW Government’s Shark Meshing (nets) Program. Sharks tagged in the trial will allow DPI and the community to monitor shark movements along the NSW coast.

The locations of the SMART drumlines and nets are shown in the maps below:




Valerie Taylor AM, 88, and Bailey Mason attended the Shark Nets Out Now protest at Manly on Saturday December 3rd, 2022