The vote is consistent with six of the other seven councils responsible for the 51 shark nets that stretch between Newcastle and Wollongong.
In 2024, NSW Premier Chris Minns asked the councils to provide feedback regarding the use of shark nets within their LGA.
That feedback led to a preferences survey on each type of shark mitigation device used in NSW. This has resulted in not a single council supporting continued use of shark nets, voting to support all the alternative methods instead.
During both the 2022/2023 and the 2023/24 seasons, only 20 target sharks were caught in the Central Coast nets. By comparison, 252 sharks were identified by alternative measures (drones, shark listening stations and SMART drumlines) allowing countermeasures to be taken when needed for public safety.
“Alternative shark mitigation technologies have been in place at the same beaches where the nets are for years and consistently prove the ineffectiveness of traditional shark nets,” said Lauren Sandeman, a marine biologist with Humane Society International (HSI) Australia.
“It’s important to remember that those sharks were always there, they just swam past, over, under or around the shark nets. The alternatives work so well because it’s a layered strategy: it’s combining multiple technologies that all work in concert to protect beachgoers and detect shark movement, enabling warnings and counter measures for public safety much earlier and much more effectively than we could before."
The call to remove nets has been growing as knowledge of nets’ inefficiency and destruction of non-targeted marine life has grown alongside the mounting evidence that modern alternative measures are significantly more effective at providing public safety.
‘When we repeatedly see the numbers that we do, we know without a doubt how effective the alternatives are. The Councils know it; surfers, swimmers and beachgoers know it, and that’s why everyone is so happy to finally get rid of the nets. Everyone is looking at the science, they’re looking at the evidence and they’re voting accordingly,’ she said.
More than 4,100 marine animals have been caught in the NSW shark meshing program (SMP) since it was implemented in 2012. Approximately 90 per cent of them were non-target species.
“Everyone’s primary concern is beach safety but our desire to enjoy the ocean shouldn’t come at the cost of marine life,” said Leo Guida, a shark expert with Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS).
“Every year, the government has blindly ignored the data and put the nets back in. And every year, those nets kill more and more marine animals and drive threatened and protected species closer to local extinctions,” he said.
Lawrence Chlebeck, marine biologist with HSI Australia said: “We are hoping this year will be different. The NSW government asked the councils to weigh in and the councils are all voting to remove the nets. Beachgoers also want the nets out. We have incredible technology that continually proves to be much more effective at keeping beachgoers safe than shark nets ever could,” he said.
“It is absolutely time that the shark nets were removed permanently.”
