Shark Huggers Feed on Tragedy

Some Australians are losing their humanity, just so they can worship a stupid fish.

Within minutes of 57-year-old surfer Mercury Psillakis being killed by a shark at Long Reef, Sydney, on Saturday, another feeding frenzy began: greenies waded into social-media posts about the incident to savage anybody who had a shred of decency or compassion for the victim.

These commenters had all the grace and decorum of the dumb, vicious animals they revere. While other people posted comments wanting to know more details or share condolences for the poor bloke’s friends and family, the dogmatic devotees of Mother Nature’s superiority sanctimoniously reminded everyone that the victim was in the shark’s domain, and if he didn’t want to be eaten he should not have crossed the shoreline.

It would be nice if these people were on the lunatic fringe, but they’re not. In fact, to some extent, their views are mainstream.

I was at nearby Manly Beach on a similarly sunny Saturday only two months ago, asking random passers-by about this very issue for a documentary I’m shooting, which will be released soon. It was depressing, but hardly surprising, to discover that most people strolling the beachside promenade sympathised with sharks more than humans.

One of the people I spoke to was a young dad who was a regular swimmer, sitting on the grass with his infant daughter. He vehemently disagreed with my claim that shark populations had reached dangerous proportions in the 25 years since great whites were granted protection in Australia, and that now might be a good time to cull a few.

Worse, when I mentioned I’d met parents just like him who were suffering unimaginable grief after losing a child to a shark (ten of the 58 people killed by sharks in Australia in the past 25 years were teenagers), he nonchalantly brushed it off, even as his daughter playfully climbed on his shoulders.

The most alarming encounter, though, was with a woman who looked to be in her early 30s. She could have been radiating the sort of maternal warmth that women her age often do, but instead angrily tried to convince me that, contrary to appearances, sharks in fact love us humans, and killing them as a precaution against attacks would be an act of unspeakably selfish barbarity.

It was a small random sample, to be sure, but it was notable that not a single person at Manly that day agreed with me that a human’s life is worth more than a shark’s.

Politicians are these days forced to come up with ways to save both people and marine life, which, as I joked in this newspaper seven years ago, is like having your flake and eating it too. The two objectives simply aren’t very compatible.

This was clear as far back as 1937, when, after a spate of nine fatalities in three years, the NSW government’s Shark Menace Advisory Committee came up with the novel idea of installing nets at popular beaches throughout summer. The nets don’t enclose the beach; rather, they entrap and kill any large animal that happens to swim through them. The need to kill sharks to protect people was never questioned.

There have been only two deaths at protected beaches in NSW since then, and 28 at unprotected ones. A similar program in Queensland, introduced in 1962, has been equally effective.

But last summer NSW Primary Industries Minister Tara Morairty ordered the nets to be pulled out a month early, in order to minimise the bycatch of unintended species, like turtles and dolphins. It was yet another of the recent decisions by politicians to appease those to whom nature is sacred, and human life is no longer sacrosanct.

Moriarty was hoping to go one better this summer by not putting the nets in at all at some beaches, but her cynical attempt to share the responsibility for the decision with local councils has failed, and the idea is in limbo for now.

None of this will ever be even remotely consoling for the family and friends of Psillakis, or, for that matter, any of the hundreds, even thousands, of Australians whose lives have been forever darkened by these stupid animals.

That so few politicians and shark researchers care about these people at all is an appalling indictment on modern Australia.

(This story was first published in The Australian on 8 September 2025.)

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