Fremantle Harbour had its own resident Tiger Shark for some time during the second world war. Efforts were made to kill it off, but they were not successful. I never heard that this Tiger Shark itself killed anyone.
Dutch submarine Tjigerhaai (Tigershark)
In 1964 I taught at Madang Technical School in Papua New Guinea. The school was a boarding school and I thought I would catch a shark to augment the student rations. I set a drum line near the harbour entrance and the following morning took a school boat with a couple of students up to the harbour mouth to check the line. We had caught a large Tiger Shark. We towed it back to the school boatshed and I started to cut some filets to cook for breakfast. The students would not eat it because they all knew someone who had been taken by a shark at their coastal villages. I tasted some, but it had a strong ammonia smell/taste.
I am ambivalent about the state government’s catch and kill policy for large sharks, but I do know that you ‘never smile at a crocodile’ or go swimming with a shark. Mamalian sea creatures seem to be happy around humans. Protesters should visit an abattoir.
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