Hours before sunrise in the warmth of the Australian night, I stepped off a splintered dock and onto a 20 foot powerboat with determined activists battling the state of Western Australia's recently implemented policy of hunting large sharks to make the beaches safer for bathers. Before introductions were made, the bow and stern lines were cast off.

Blair Ranford was at the helm. Sturdy, about 5' 8" and built like a rugby player, Blair works in the pink diamond mines of Northern Australia half the year. The other half of the year he's a volunteer shark researcher in the great white haven of South Africa. Laura Boute, a marine biologist, was there also. Laura is bright eyed with blonde curls that bounce down the length of her back. It was her boat. Laura and her husband ran a business rapelling down the sides of deep-ocean oilrigs to make repairs. Now retired, they've donated a boat and fight the mitigation policy fulltime.

Their mission was to monitor the government boats charged with carrying out the shark mitigation policy, or as some call it, the shark-cull.

The mission of the government boats was to capture sharks and kill the bigger ones.

We glided silently through the harbor and left the smell of land, out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean.

"We basically come out to film it, share it, and then shame it," Blair said. But as I would learn, often the mission goes far beyond observation. Sometimes, the only way to save a shark's life is to get into the water with it.

In Perth, gazing out from the rocky bluffs that overlook the white beach and the Indian Ocean, bright orange dots stand out below the horizon. Each dot is a buoy the size of a beach ball from which a baited hook, the size of a man's torso, dangles like a dinner bell for hungry predators. There are thirty-six of these drum-lines a half mile offshore from Perth's popular swimming beaches. And thirty-six more a few hours south off Margaret River, a world-renowned surf spot.

Each drum line is a set of three buoys tied together. One buoy is anchored to the bottom and about twenty yards away, the other two float together and from them hangs the baited hook. The drum lines are a part of Western Australia's Shark Mitigation Effort. The policy is a response to an unprecedented string of fatal attacks. In the last three years, seven people have been taken by great white sharks along Western Australia's 12,500 kilometers of coastline. Implemented this January, the mitigation effort is being driven by the Western Australia Premier, the equivalent of a U.S. governor, Colin Barnett.

In total, the shark mitigation effort has cost close to $20 million.

Great whites, tiger sharks, and bull sharks that are over three meters and caught on the drum lines are pulled along side a Department of Fisheries Boat, shot in the head, and then dragged eight kilometers out to sea and dumped. Sharks smaller than three meters are released alive, but often they die as well due to injuries sustained from hooks out the tops of their heads or hooks out their sides and through their gills. They are dumped back into the ocean and sink to the bottom.

The Western Australia government says that the attacks have affected tourism, a $5 billion annual industry. But no reports have been published that show a slump in tourism revenue. The government also says that this is a public safety issue, and in the best interest of the people who use the water. Initially, some surfers and ocean-goers supported the policy, but as time has passed, those voices have gone silent.

In 2000, a particularly horrifying attack shocked the beach community. At Cottesloe Beach, the most popular stretch of Perth's world class coast, a large white shark swam through bathers in the early morning calm and bit a man's leg off as he stood in the water just a few meters from the shore. The fish was so large and the water so shallow that it had nearly beached itself. The man bled to death almost instantly.

The early morning sun painted the sky as Blair pushed down the throttle and the small boat skipped across the water headed south at 20 knots. Everything about Blair was serious except his eyes, the color of the sea. Over the wind and spray, he talked sharks. "We've probably had in the vicinity of 140 sharks caught. Officially we don't know because the government won't tell us."

Laura, dressed in a wetsuit, chimed in. "We think it's around 40 three-meter plus tiger sharks that have been shot or were already dead on the line. Then there's at least another 20 undersized sharks that were found dead or were cannibalized."

We approached the southern-most drum line as it bobbed on the glassy surface. The water was so clear you could see the glinting silver of the baitfish on the hook, then straight down past it—forty feet to the bottom.

"Listen mate," Blair said in a thick Australian accent. "This is 100 percent a great white shark issue. We haven't seen a single great white shark caught yet. It's these poor, beautiful tiger sharks that are being killed." He let out a frustrated laugh and shook his head. "We haven't had a tiger shark attack since 1925, and even that story's a little dodgy."

"The problem is we're taking out breeding-sized animals," Laura said. "We don't understand their breeding populations or breeding genetics. We're seeing a huge number of females here and the really concerning thing is that this is the time of the year female Tiger sharks are pregnant. And they're not doing any research on these animals. They're simply dumping them offshore, dead."

Around 6:30 a.m. we got our first look at the Department of Fisheries boat, a fifty-foot trawler with a large open stern from which a metal ramp hangs to drag sharks up onto the deck. On the white hull, FISHERIES, is painted in bold letters right above the motto, "Fish For The Future." On deck were three men in matching white uniforms and sunglasses. One of them was swinging a large, three-pronged grappling hook attached to a rope from the side of the boat. They approached the first set of buoys and the crewmember with the hook launched it into the sea at the drum lines. It hooked the rope that connected the buoys and he hauled them onto the deck. The hook had the chewed up carcass of a fish on it and clanked against the side of the boat as he pulled. He replaced the bait and threw it back into the water. We followed them as they repeated the process on every drum line up the coast.

There were no sharks all morning.

"It's not different from the Maasai Mara in Kenya, or the Serengeti, or the wilds of Alaska, eh," Blair said. "At any point there is a risk, even though it's a small one, of sharing the water with a large predator. People need to reconnect with that idea."

"If sharks really saw us as food we wouldn't see seven attacks in three years, there'd be twenty attacks a day off Perth," Laura added. "We're the easiest thing in the ocean to catch. We sit in the same spot on our surfboards for hours at a time." She paused and looked out at the horizon, "Sometimes they (sharks) do just make a mistake."

Hours had passed now. The summer sun was high and bright. The breeze grew, and the ocean rolled and broke and sparkled so brightly that it hurt your eyes to look. Blaire squinted at the distance and a concerned look came over his face. Three buoys were tangled together. A shark was on.

The great white shark is an IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) red listed species, vulnerable to extinction. It is protected under fourteen international treaties that Australia is signatory to. Great whites and tiger sharks are also protected under Australian federal law, their Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

The Federal Minister of the Environment, Greg Hunt, granted an exemption for Western Australia's shark mitigation policy, saying it was in the interest of public safety to do so.

"Basically they've exempted themselves from their own environmental protection laws," said Jeff Hansen, the managing director of Sea Shepherd Australia, an organization whose mission is to protect the biodiversity of the oceans.

However, Federal Senator Rachel Siewart, who had been out on the Sea Shepherd boat fighting the cull, said, "These exemptions are for national emergencies and disasters such as bushfires or floods, when they have to make urgent decisions. The drum lines and cull don't meet any conditions of a national emergency."

Siewart has introduced legislation to stop the cull and has gathered over 88,000 signatures on a petition.

"It's not until you actually see it happen, and then it hits you right here," she said, pointing to her heart. "It's really horrifying to think that they just caught a shark, it had been suffering for some time on those drum lines, and they shot it and dragged it out to sea, needlessly. This is a public relations exercise for Minister Barnett and it sickens me."

The responsibility of monitoring the lines—catching and releasing or catching and killing—falls on the Federal Department of Fisheries, the government organization traditionally responsible for monitoring and preserving the health of the local ecosystem.

"They put the job out to tender but they couldn't get anyone to apply, no contractor wanted to do the work," said Hansen, who recently returned from a successful mission battling Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean. "So they forced the Department of Fisheries to do it. On the Fisheries website it says sharks in our ocean is a sign of a healthy marine environment."

One hundred leading shark scientists and experts from around the world joined in writing the Australian government and urging them to abandon the policy. The letter stated that all of the research that's been done has shown that drum lines are ineffective in curbing attacks from migratory species. The great white is a highly migratory species, andis regularly tracked moving between continents.

"The problem is we could kill thousands and thousands of sharks here right now and it wouldn't lower the risk one iota," Hansen said. "Because there is nothing to stop a great white from coming up with the whale migration, swimming close to the beach one day, and taking out a surfer."

Recent polls have shown 80-90 percent of Australians are opposed to the cull. Two protests have taken place at Cottesloe beach. The first rally had 4,000 people. The second protest saw nearly 10,000 people in shark hats, waving signs and banners, and chanting, "great whites have rights!" There have been no demonstrations in support of the cull.

"They ignored the science and they ignored public opinion," Hansen said. "And they ignored the wishes of some of the victims families. Sharon Burden, whose son Kyle was killed by a great white joined Sea Shepherd in taking the Western Australia government to court."

Sea Shepherd filed for a judicial review and immediate injunction to end the cull. The injunction was not granted and Sea Shepherd has since filed another lawsuit.

"Kyle was killed by a great white shark at a surfing spot. In an area he loved," Mrs. Burden told me. "When I raised Kyle, I didn't teach him that you solve problems by brute force. That to me is beneath us as a sophisticated and well-resourced society with intelligent people in it."

"It's a big one!" Blair yelled to Laura's husband, Andy, who had just arrived on the scene. He rushed out on another boat after Laura called him about a possible shark on the line.

"Is it a great white?" Andy yelled over the drone of engine noise.

"Tiger!" Blair yelled back.

Fisheries worked diligently to pull the shark along the side of their boat. Its muscular tail slammed the hull again and again, each time sounding as if a gong were being hammered. Three men gripped the ropes tightly as the heat beat down on everyone out there. It was impossible to distinguish the salt you tasted in your sweat from the salt of the ocean spray.

"Are they going to shoot it?" Andy yelled to us.

"I can't tell if it's three meters," Blair yelled back as he revved the engine and we sped around the stern of Fisheries to get a better look. The silver ramp had been lowered into the water and the drum line was now attached to an electric winch. The winch let out a dull-groan as it slowly pulled the shark from the water.

The shark thrashed and gyrated as it was pulled up the ramp. The diamond-striped pattern on its skin glittered spectacularly in the sun. Thick red blood ran from its head, down the ramp and into the ocean, dissipating into a large cloud. We were close enough to smell the rotting fish it had thrown back up, something the shark does in moments of high stress or as a defense mechanism.

"Get back 100 meters!" Fisheries yelled to us. "We're going to discharge a firearm."

"We're fifty meters!" Blair yelled back. The law says that the chase boats have to stay a distance of fifty meters away from the Fisheries boat at all times, and 100-meters if they are going to discharge a firearm. "What's the size of that shark?" Blair asked, uncertain of his next move.

We waited. No response. Then, all of a sudden, Fisheries took off, moving at 25 knots and throwing spray out in massive waves as it ripped through the water. All three protest boats began chasing at full throttle. "They've done this before!" Blair yelled to me. "They don't want us around when they release the shark because it'll likely die!"

The shark was not three meters long, so Fisheries had to release it back into the water, but they did not want it to be documented if the shark dies from its wounds. So they tried to lose the chase boats.

Suddenly, chase ongoing, we saw the shark slide down the ramp and into the frothy wake of the fisheries boat. We quickly stopped and spotted the shark. It was swimming towards us, slowly, and as we got right on top of it, the shark turned over and sank, disappearing into the blue haze. Within moments Blair and Laura were in the water with snorkels, fins and weight belts, diving below the surface to try and find the injured animal.

Fisheries was now back on the scene. "Do not touch that shark!" they yelled. Andy zoomed over to plead with them. "The shark needs to be swum," he said, referring to the process of helping the shark to move water through its gills so it can breath. "If you touch that fish, you will be charged with possessing an endangered species," they replied. Possession of an endangered species is a crime that comes with a minimum $25,000 fine, even if you're trying to save its life.

"You're a fcking joke!" Blair yelled. "It's dying!" The activists bobbed in the water above the dying shark, all screaming at Fisheries and each other. Eventually everyone got out of the water and the boats floated in silence.

Fisheries seemed to be satisfied that their work was done and left. Then Andy decided to get back in the water. He handed me a mask and fins and a waterproof Go Pro camera the size of a baseball attached to a three-foot steel pole. "You can use the pole for defense if need be, mate," he said to me with an amused smile.

We jumped in and the bright, loud world above the surface disappeared. We had entered another one. I could see the shark lying belly up some thirty feet down. Its white silhouette sharply outlined by the smooth, sand bottom. The shark's mouth slowly opened and closed, as if it were gasping for air. Its black eyes followed us as we swam by.

When a shark is lying on its back it goes into a catatonic state and, unless it is flipped back over, it will drown. After a few dives, we floated on the surface unsure of what to do. Then Andy told me he was going to dive down again, grab the shark by the tail and flip it over.

"You know time slows down in those tense moments," he said later that night, sipping a beer and watching the orange sunset. "I can remember grabbing its tail, and the skin is beautiful, just an amazing texture, a sort of fine sand paper. And I just turned it for a second, it gave a shudder and I saw the head and I went, 'That's it.' And it was gone."

It was a celebratory mood. "It was pure elation. We were able to get one away," Andy said. We were sitting, tied to the dock, on his forty-five foot Beneteau sailboat that he had planned on taking around the world, a trip postponed to fight the cull, when the phone rang.

"There's a tiger shark," the voice said, "on the northernmost line off Mulaloo. Fisheries won't be around again until morning. It's going to die."

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