Scientist criticizes Hollywood-style shark hunts

Western Australia's controversial shark-culling policy has been influenced by Jaws and other Hollywood films, an Australian academic said on Tuesday.

University of Sydney researcher Christopher Neff said policy talk about the implementation of drum lines and shark culls was "more closely aligned with movie mythology than evidence-based science".

Drum line refers to a series of flotation devices from which a single baited hook is suspended.

"This policy is using myths as the basis for killing sharks that are protected by law and which provides no real beach safety," Neff told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.

"This fiction serves an important political purpose because films allow politicians to rely on familiar narratives following shark bites to blame individual sharks in order to make the events governable and to trump evidence-based science."

In his report The Jaws Effect, released over the weekend, Neff argued that the Western Australia state government's "imminent threat" policy, which allows for the pre-emptive killing of sharks found in swimming areas, embodied all the themes of Steven Spielberg's famous 1975 film.

In Jaws, a police sheriff hunts down, fights and blows up a giant shark terrorizing beachgoers at a fictional popular US seaside town.

In September, Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett defended his government's policy to catch and kill what he termed "rogue sharks," but ruled out using baited drum lines this summer.

"A shark that stays in one area for repeated periods, I think we need to catch that shark and remove it," he told the ABC.

Neff said movie narratives about shark behavior may not work if there is robust opposition from scientists, conservationists and the public.

"The use of movie symbolism to portray sharks as rogue, serial killers advantages the government and keeps out other stakeholders," Neff said in his findings.

Of the 63 reported shark fatalities in the 10 years to 2013, almost one-fourth occurred in Australian waters. Eight of those were in Western Australia between 2010 and 2013, leading to a swift government response.