A now-familiar sight had occurred in Australia one morning in October; there had been another shark attack and a missing surfer. Authorities launched aerial surveillance drones into the sky, rescue crews hopped on boats to search the area, and medics waited on the shore.
The person's surfboard was discovered through days of searching; however, his body was never located. This year, he was recorded as the seventh shark attack casualty in Australia- an unprecedented increase has never been seen in the state for 86 years.
Attacks in various countries, including Queensland and New South Wales, have taken place this year. One of them is a diver who, after a presumed great white attack, had also been missing in January. They never discovered his body.
There have been no shark casualties in 2019, and only one or two casualties were seen annually in the years before that. According to a Taronga Conservation Society Australia representative, the last time the nation had seven shark attack fatalities a year was back in 1934. The highest annual number on record, with nine casualties, goes back to 1929.
"In Australia, this year is a bit of a blip," Culum Brown, a professor at Macquarie University's Department of Biological Sciences in Sydney, stated. "And in fact, the long-term average is one -- one fatality per year. So, seven is a long way above that; there's no doubt," he added.
The Taronga representative had said that the average of one death every year has remained constant for the last 50 years.
7 Fatal Shark Attacks as of October 2020
Pretty much, the entire ecosystem is being damaged and pushed to adapt as the oceans heat up. Fishes migrate where they have never been before, and sharks pursue their targets and inching closer to coasts with humans as the aquatic ecosystem evolves.
It is not that the number of shark attacks in Australia alone has risen dramatically - 21 shark attacks have also been recorded this year, and that is common and consistent with recent years. The discrepancy is in the number of fatalities.
There seem to be various potential reasons - some analysts have pointed out that year-by-year numbers still fluctuate, which may be plain bad luck. However, the climate crisis is another potential cause.
Sharks Follow Water Temperature
The Australian climate crisis on the ground has contributed to wild bush fires, prolonged heatwaves, and one of the worst recorded droughts.
However, with acidification and increasing temperatures, this has also hit the oceans, which can inflict damage to whole ecosystems. In specific, Australia's south-eastern area is at the forefront of the changing climate- temperature increase of surface waters is around four times the global estimate.
Maybe this complex, changing temperature of the water is the reason why sharks are starting to migrate into human spaces. According to Robert Harcourt, a shark ecology researcher and director of the Macquarie Marine Predator Research group, some animals like bull sharks like to spend most of their time in warm southern waters.
"I would foresee that there's going to be greater movement, an increase in geographic range, in a lot of these species," Harcourt stated. "That's because the dynamics of climate change mean their suitable habitat in terms of water temperature and prey distribution is changing as well. And these animals are large, far-ranging apex predators."
