When buying shark fillets from your fishmonger there's no way of knowing what type of shark you're actually buying. You could be eating dusky or bronze whaler (sold at Coles supermarkets), dogfish or wobbegong. There are over 300 species of sharks; one thing that many shark species share is long life histories and low fecundity. This means that it takes a long time to reach sexual maturity, they don't reproduce very often and when they do, they have few offspring at each event.

To what age do you think a fish can live? Two, five, maybe ten years? Have you even thought about it?

Some fish have been found to live up to 150 years of age! One such species is the orange roughy. Many deep ocean dwelling fish, such as orange roughy, have long lifespans. But with the long lifespan comes slow reproduction rates. Some humans start reproducing earlier than these fish; orange roughy reach sexual maturity at around 25 - 30 years!

Tuna has to be one of the most popular fish eaten in the world. And one of the most valuable. Some individual Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT) have commanded up to AUS $40,000 PER FISH before being onsold at various markets in Japan. This is the predominant reason why this fish is on the verge of being commercially extinct.

A female dugong over 2m was found floating on the surface off Coogee beach this morning after being fatally caught in a shark net. The animal was found by lifeguards although it is alleged that the Fisheries department were informed of the situation last night. The gentle herbivores are not often found in Sydney waters, inhabiting warmer, tropical waters. It's likely she drifted south on the warm currents before being captured in the net. The animal has been taken to Taronga zoo for an autopsy for further information. Another dugong, male, was fatally caught in shark nets off Freshwater in 2007. 

Shark nets are only deployed in NSW (between Wollongong and Newcastle), Queensland and South Africa. Measuring just 150m wide they are randomly deployed and move from beach to beach from day to day. Sharks are able to swim around the nets, in fact around 40% of sharks are caught on the beachside of the nets as they head back out to sea.

The nets are an antiquated, ineffective tool that does not serve its primary purpose of protecting the public. Both open beach shark attacks that occurred last summer (Avalon & Bondi) had nets deployed at the time.

If you'd like to help us put pressure on the State Govt to implement alternatives please click here to fill out our online survey and let us know what you think of shark nets.