You have probably all read this article, and if you haven’t you should. South African-born social anthropologist Ceridwen Dovey does an excellent job of introducing and interrogating the various shark bite mitigation measures available in the New Yorker, no less. The subject has been in and out of the news with increasing frequency for at least two years, owing largely to sensational reports of sharks repeatedly biting people in Australia and Reunion. The Western Australian response to a spate of shark bites at beaches in the state has been to fish out sharks using nets and drumlines – the same approach taken by the KZN Sharks Board here in South Africa.
Dovey speaks to Christopher Neff, who thinks deeply about the language we use to speak about shark bites, and their political and social ramifications. Cape Town’s amazing Shark Spotters program gets a mention, as does the SharkShield. There are many non-lethal measures currently in testing – not all of them as location and species dependent as Shark Spotters (which works because Cape Town’s great white sharks are a surface-swimming species and are visible from high ground close to the coast). It is a hopeful time for relations between sharks and humans, as long as the scientific impetus is not allowed to flag.
Full article here.
