Apparently, Australia is rolling out an enormous new shark strategy involving drones, surveillance, tracking systems and enough futuristic technology to make the average beach look like the set of a military operation.
We now have drones flying overhead, listening stations beneath the water, tagged sharks sending signals and people staring at computer screens waiting for something with a fin to wander into the wrong postcode.
All of this is designed to keep us safer.
And fair enough. Nobody wants to be eaten while trying to enjoy a Sunday afternoon at the beach. It would put a definite dampener on the day, particularly if you had already paid fourteen dollars for parking.
But I can’t help wondering whether the sharks are sitting beneath the surface, looking up at all this equipment and thinking, What the bloody hell happened to these people?
Because the sharks haven’t changed.
They are still doing exactly what sharks have always done. Swimming around. Eating things. Occasionally investigating something they probably shouldn’t. They aren’t plotting against us. They haven’t formed an underwater terrorist organisation. There isn’t a great white in a cave somewhere pointing at a map of Bondi.
We are the ones who have changed.
Once upon a time, people understood that the ocean was not a municipal swimming pool. It was enormous, unpredictable and full of creatures that had not signed a behavioural agreement with the local council.
You went in knowing there were risks.
There were waves. There were rips. There were jellyfish, stingrays, blue-ringed octopuses and several thousand other Australian animals quietly waiting for an opportunity to ruin your holiday.
That was Australia.
Now we seem slightly offended that the ocean still contains sharks.
We behave as though they have broken into our space, when technically we are the ones wandering into their house wearing fluorescent bathers and splashing around like injured seals.
Then, when a shark appears, we call the authorities.
“There’s a shark in the ocean!”
Yes. That is generally where they keep them.
We’ve become so accustomed to controlling everything that we can no longer cope with the idea of nature doing whatever it likes. We track our sleep, count our steps, monitor our heart rate and receive alerts when the washing machine has finished. Naturally, we now expect the sea to send us a notification before anything dangerous happens.
Warning: Large shark approaching. Please exit the water and consider visiting the gift shop.
Soon, I expect every shark will be required to wear a GPS ankle bracelet.
There will be an app, of course.
You’ll open it before going to the beach and discover that Barry the Great White was last seen near Newcastle, Sharon the Tiger Shark is behaving suspiciously off Port Macquarie and Kevin has breached the exclusion zone again.
Kevin has always been a problem.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t use technology to protect people. If drones can spot sharks, locate swimmers in trouble and help lifesavers respond faster, that is obviously a good thing. Anything that saves a life is worth considering.
But there is something fascinating about the lengths we will go to make the natural world feel safe, orderly and answerable to us.
We don’t just want to reduce the risk. We want to eliminate it.
We want to swim in the shark’s habitat without encountering a shark. We want to build houses surrounded by bush but never experience a bushfire. We want to live beside rivers that never flood and under trees that never drop branches.
We want nature, but only if it has been properly supervised.
Preferably by a drone.
Perhaps this is because we have spent so much of our lives indoors that we have forgotten what the outdoors actually is. Nature is lovely on television. It is less charming when it bites you. We love wildlife when it is photogenic, distant and aware of its contractual obligations. Dolphins are welcome. Whales are magnificent. Penguins are adorable.
Sharks have terrible public relations.
A dolphin could probably knock someone unconscious and we would still describe the encounter as magical. A shark swims within fifty metres of a person and suddenly helicopters are circling overhead.
The shark itself may not even be interested. It could simply be passing through, completely unaware that it has triggered three drones, two patrol boats, a beach evacuation and a live cross to breakfast television.
Perhaps the real problem is that we have come to believe every bad event must have been preventable. If something goes wrong, somebody must have failed. There should have been a warning, a barrier, a policy, an app or a government department making sure the wild animal behaved appropriately.
But the ocean has never promised to be safe. That is part of what makes it the ocean. By all means, use the drones. Track the sharks. Warn the swimmers. Give the lifesavers every tool available to help keep people alive.
Just don’t forget who is visiting whom.
The sharks haven’t invaded our beaches.
We have simply become shocked to discover that the ocean is still wild—and that not everything in the world can be made completely safe, no matter how much technology we fly above
