Phasing out shark nets and drum lines at beaches around Australia, and establishing programs to better inform ocean goers on the real risks of sharks would be part of a $50 million research development plan announced by the Greens yesterday.

Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson made the announcement at a shark summit in Sydney on Friday, in the same week as surfer Sam Edwardes was bitten by a shark at Belongil beach in Byron Bay. The Tasmanian Senator called for the establishment of a national sharks working group, one of the recommendations put forward in his time as chair of the Senate Enquiry into Shark Control in 2017.

Shark controls such as netted beaches have been in use in Australia since the 1930s, the summit was told. But there is no evidence that lethal methods designed to kill sharks – like nets and drum lines - make ocean-goers safe, the Senator said.

“They are designed to provide a sense of security, real or false,” he said.

“The only way to eliminate the risk of people being bitten by sharks is to kill all of the sharks in the ocean. This would obviously be catastrophic to the health of our oceans, which are already under significant pressure from climate change, pollution and overfishing.