The West Australian government has stopped funding the only part of its shark hazard mitigation strategy that made sense, the state opposition and Greens have said.

The Department of Fisheries was allocated $2m for shark tagging and tracking for the 2014 and 2015 financial years.

But the fisheries minister, Ken Baston, said the project had ended because researchers believed enough sharks had been tagged for behaviour analysis.

Baston said the shark monitoring network, which keeps track of more than 600 sharks off the WA coast, would continue to operate.

The department would tag more sharks if the opportunity arose during normal business, he said.

The Greens MP Lynn MacLaren said the tagging and tracking program was “one of the few aspects of the government’s shark hazard policy last year that made sense”.

“The term ‘white elephant’ comes to mind when I think of those expensive receivers left in the ocean without anyone to maintain them,” she said.

“Presumably, the Barnett government has decided that finding out more about great white sharks and their behaviour is no longer important.

“If that is the case, the government has not got a leg to stand on if it wants to kill any more of them.”

The opposition spokesman on fisheries, Dave Kelly, was “staggered”.

“Throughout the whole shark debate, we have called for a calm response that is guided by science to reduce the risk to swimmers,” he said. “That means aerial patrols and a strong tagging and monitoring program.

“We should be increasing resources in this area, not taking them away.”

Fisheries said funding for the monitoring network would come out of departmental operating expenses for research and shark hazard mitigation operations.



“It will continue to operate, along with some tagging work by our research staff and their collaborators in South Australia,” the department said.