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Speaker 1: Four shark attacks in two days. This is in New

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Speaker 1: South Wales. The latest to surfer thirty nine year old guy.

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Speaker 1: He's actually not in too bad shape, but two of

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Speaker 1: the earlier victims they remain in critical condition in hospital.

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Speaker 1: Clinton Duffy is curator of Marine Biology at Auckland Museum

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Speaker 1: with me tonight, good evening.

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Speaker 2: Good evening.

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Speaker 1: So this is bull sharks. What's going on with the

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Speaker 1: bull sharks.

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Speaker 2: Bull Sharks are a tropical species that's very common in

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Speaker 2: coastal waters, but they also live in freshwater as well,

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Speaker 2: and so at this sort of time of the year,

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Speaker 2: they're pushing further south and that they can actually be

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Speaker 2: reasonably common in the Sydney area, particularly inside the harbor.

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Speaker 1: And it's the rain is making them kind of what

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Speaker 1: is it doing exactly to their senses that that's making

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Speaker 1: them potentially aggressive.

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Speaker 2: So bull sharks are adapted to feeding on carrion that

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Speaker 2: has washed down from large tropical rivers, so that you know,

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Speaker 2: they're used to eating the carcases of land animals that

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Speaker 2: get swept down down to the sea and floods, and

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Speaker 2: so they quin very strongly to freshwater plumes resulting from

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Speaker 2: flood floods. And so they're in there looking for things,

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Speaker 2: you know, large large things, either in trouble or already dead,

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Speaker 2: to feed on.

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Speaker 1: Not humans, but because there's fresh water there, they're like

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Speaker 1: it's like when something's in the oven, you can smell it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so they humans aren't part of their

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Speaker 2: normal diet. But they're one of the few species of

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Speaker 2: sharks that are built, you know, they have a heavy

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Speaker 2: enough build to actually take on something the size of

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Speaker 2: a human being. So they're in there looking for a

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Speaker 2: free meal and anything struggling in the water. And people

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Speaker 2: often look pretty awkward uncoordinated in the water compared to

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Speaker 2: a shark. So yeah, times like this, you know, they

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Speaker 2: can be mistaken for dinner.

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Speaker 1: Clinton, would you be going surfing off the coast of

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Speaker 1: Sydney right now?

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Speaker 2: Well, I don't go surfing full stop, but yeah, conditions

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Speaker 2: look fairly sketchy, and certainly there's a lot of bull

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Speaker 2: shark activity. It sounds like it's right up and down

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Speaker 2: the sort of the northern New South Wales coast. I

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Speaker 2: have been in the water with three very large bull

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Speaker 2: sharks off Queensland, but and fairly sort of you know,

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Speaker 2: calm conditions, clear water could see what was going on.

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Speaker 2: We could both get the measure of each other, so

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Speaker 2: I didn't feel too concerned.

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Speaker 1: And that was on purpose or by chance, Well yeah.

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Speaker 2: Kind of it was actually by chance. I was sticking

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Speaker 2: diving on the reck of the Young Gala and pop

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Speaker 2: down over the side, right down onto the bottom and

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Speaker 2: had three big bull sharks come and checking out.

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Speaker 1: If they can see you. Water's clear, there's no fresh

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Speaker 1: water running off, there's been no rain. Are they actually

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Speaker 1: non threatening to us?

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Speaker 2: Generally most sharks, you know, having a clue what a

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Speaker 2: human being is, and they tend to tend to avoid

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Speaker 2: objects they're not familiar with. But you know, at times

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Speaker 2: bull sharks have attacked people in clear water off quite

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Speaker 2: often surfers, but also sometimes people jumping off boats and

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Speaker 2: wore jetties. You know, they sort of que into those

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Speaker 2: sorts of stimuli like loud splashes and things like that,

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Speaker 2: and jetties and boats. They're often used to scavenging around

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Speaker 2: those for off or throwing off them. So you know,

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Speaker 2: a person off a boat or a jetty can seem

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Speaker 2: like something falling or being thrown off of one of

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Speaker 2: those platforms.

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Speaker 1: The most important question, do we get bull sharks in

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Speaker 1: New Zealand.

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Speaker 2: No we don't. There have been the occasional report, but

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Speaker 2: they almost always turned out to be misidentifications of bronze

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Speaker 2: whalers where close relatives, But they're fish heaters. But yeah,

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Speaker 2: the waters would have to warm up an awful lot

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Speaker 2: before bull sharks would make home here.

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Speaker 1: Good news, Clinton, Thank you. Clinton Duffy, curator of the

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Speaker 1: Marine Biology at Auckland Museum, on the shark text across

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Speaker 1: the Tasman. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive listen

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