In my 45 years of surfing,
I've never seen anything like this.
At the moment, you're going for a surf, and wondering if it's going to be your last one.
One of the consequences of a healthy ecosystem
will be that there are more sharks,
and that's something we're going to have to adjust to.
We don't know whether this is the freakiest six months
that history will ever record,
or whether this is the new history,
and we're just on the first page of it.
Byron Bay has evolved over the last 20 years.
It's gone from a sleepy village, a surf village, a working class area
to an international tourist destination for backpackers.
It's a really vibrant young people's town.
It's a very laid back town.
My name is Neil Cameron, I live in Byron Bay.
I've been living around the area for about 40 years.
I've been a surfer for probably 45 years.
It's a passion of mine.
I love the ocean, and I love everything about surfing.
The past three or four months,
in the Byron area, we've had at least one death
and a couple of shark attack maulings.
Despite the attacks, we make a decision to go in the water ourselves every day.
It'sa bit like playing Russian roulette at the moment
but we make the decision to go in the water, and surf.
That was the trigger point - September 2014.
Everyone was going, what's going on? This guy's been taken by a great white
right in the bay, just 15 metres from shore.
And that's just unheard of.
It just seems then to have steamrolled
The incidents are just getting closer and closer together.
My name is Bruce MacKenzie, I've lived in Byron Bay for about 35 years.
and I've been a reporter here on the North Coast for 20.
Every time your phone rings, you think, surely not again.
And it's happening.
It's really happening.
...50 year old man is attacked by a shark...
...a man is fighting for life after being bitten by a shark at East Ballina...
The waters on the North Coast on NSW are really unique.
You get tiger sharks coming down, you get great whites coming up.
We've probably got bull sharks most of the year round.
So, of the three big sharks that are seen as dangers to humans,
we've got all three at different times.
I'm Dr Daniel Bucher, and I'm senior lecturer in Marine Biology and Fishieres at Southern Cross University.
There's so doubt there have been more sightings of sharks in northern NSW in the last couple of months.
One of the things that I've noticed is that the water is green.
So that means there's lots of plankton.
The plankton is fed on by the small baitfish.
They're driven into baitballs by predatory fish,
the dolphins are coming in to feed on them, the sharks are coming in to feed on the bigger fish,
and maybe also the dolphins.
The attacks have had a massive impact on the whole three shires.
We are very very dependent upon tourism.
And already we are seeing people cancelling holidays.
We're seeing less people in the water.
I would say it's at least 50% down, the fear factor thing.
The impact is not only economic, it's also a social impact on the community.
We held a community meeting two weeks ago.
The end result of the metting that we had, we saw a show of hands
for the one option that everyone was in agreeance with
was a decision made totally out of frustration, and it's that we have a partial cull.
That meeting grabbed the media attention
and all of a sudden, it's headline news.
The Minister and the Premier have to rethink.
After a string of shark attacks on the far North Coast of NSW,
some surfers and government officials believe a cull should be introduced.
People flock to the Tweed Coast for the pristine beaches,
but the area is also popular with sharks.
The 5m tiger shark was allegedly captured of Tweed Heads by fisherman.
To me, it's the only one I can see that may do some impact.
If that's what it takes so that we don't have another death,
or shark mauling amongst our community, then so be it.
I don't see a problem with that. Human life is more important.
The Gold Coast has had in place shark netting and drumlines for 50 years.
In that time, they haven't had one shark attack.
On the Sunshine Coast it's a pretty similar scenario.
Shark netting and baited drumlines - no sharks attacks.
Why can't we have those systems that work?
Why can't we have them in place in Byron Bay?
And around this area?
As far as the drumlines and nets and that go,
you'd almost have to say the results speak for themselves.
They won't publicise what catch they get off those drumlines
but a friend of mine who basically knows what's going on said,
last month six white pointers were caught on the drumlines.
Most of the guys I know here on the Goldie, they're not particularly worried, but they are spooked.
None of my mates will go surfing the beaches of Byron or Ballina.
They won't go near them, not with a 20ft pole.
I think that really, when they see that there's a shark attack and they've got that shark
on camera, or they can see it? Go and take it out.
Because it's already chomped someone. a mad dog bites someone? You kill the dog.
Nothing comes close to the amount of shark activity we've had in the last 12 months.
People are definitely now, for the first time in my life,
saying this out loud. They're looking north to the Gold Coast and saying,
they've got nets and drumlines - no attacks.
Maybe we need to do the same thing.
The culling thing wasn't even mentioned a year ago.
If you'd done a straw poll of surfers a year ago, it would have been 99% against.
and now it's like one of those issues that's really divisive.
Yeah, I don't see any use in putting nets up
This has only just started happening seeing as how there's lots of fish in the bay.
I don't think it's really what Byron would want.
Look, to be totally honest, I don't think it's necessary.
I don't want it to happen.
The idea of culling, I think, from all I've read,
it's proven not to work.Who knows how many sharks are out there anyway?
Drumlines, beach meshing - they're culling programs.
It's not ethically a good thing to do.
I think we need to look for alternatives.
Culling is what you do when you've got an unnaturally high population.
It's not something you do with a population that's already unnaturally low.
The oceanographic conditions are unusual at the moment - they will change.
And when they change, the food will go away, and so will the sharks.
I think it's a little bit selfish to say, go out and kill some endangered species for me so I can go surfing.
I do think the media are partially, at least, to blame
for the image of sharks and the hysteria around shark attacks.
There's just this insatiable appetite for shark-related stories.
and I don't know what you do about that.
We've actually had a chat in local news circles
like, what's news now?
It's like a sighting is hardly news, it's got to be a bump or an encounter
because they're just getting spotted every day.
The Mick Fanning incident that fed the whole media frenzy,
I don't think it did the people that are living with the realities of this shark situation any favours,
to cover stories like this, you've got to be careful
because this is the sort of thing that could radically affect these communities.
Espeiclaly this town, Byron Bay, you take away the tourist dollar
there's not any dollars left to go around.
They have this high number of sharks - unless we can find some mitigation measures
or they decide to go away, it'll have a growing impact on a lot of the businesses.
You're looking at $20-30 million in trade,
and the impact - nobody knows. This hasn't happened before.
If nothing is done, the short and long term ramifications
i don't want to talk about.
We don't have nets or drumlines - there are casualities to that type of protection,
I know it's a case of what price do you put on human life,
better to save a human life and lose a fish or two.
But hopefully we can come up with something better than that.
At the moment the department of primary industries
have been mobilised to do what they can with the resources they currently have,
the next stage is looking at what alternative technologies might be deployed,
we can't go around killing sharks just because we want to go swimming.
How do we then tell Japan not to go whaling?
Or Africa to stop trophy hunting?
When we're just as bad with our own predators.
I think we do have to take the lead and show the world that there are other ways to deal with these problems.
I suspect that if this is the start of what is going to become normal shark activity,
fairly drastic measures will be taken in years to come.
And hopefully this is a seasonal thing,
and by the time summer rocks around, the whales will have gone
the baitballs of fish will have gone,
and hopefully the sharks will have gone as well.
If you want ot kill tourism in a town, then keep going down the track we're going.
and that is, to have no protection.
They're not coming here now,
and if we have another shark attack, they won't be coming here at all.
And I don't want to see that.
I want to see a proper program put in to place
to protect the people of the North Coast.