Sydney surfers still swim with the sharks
BOX jellyfish may be nastier, the sun a bigger long-term danger, and those rip currents far more likely to get you. But the biggest reassurance to swimmers at Sydney's beaches has to be the knowledge that, out there beyond the surf, nets are keeping the sharks out.
Do the nets work, though? They are not an impenetrable barrier. Rather than the comforting image of an impassable mesh strung permanently across the beaches, the reality is that the 150-metre long, six-metre wide nets are "bottom-set" on the seabed in about 10 metres of water. Each net might be up to 500 metres from the beach.
This means there is nothing to stop the sharks swimming around or over the net. And that's only on the days when the nets are in the water: most are lifted out every 24 to 48 hours for servicing, to prevent rotting, to clean out debris and to remove dead sharks.
Forget your safety blanket - this is "purely a fishing operation", says Dr John Stevens, one of Australia's top shark experts. "It simply reduces the shark population in the area."
Alarmingly, 35 to 50 per cent of sharks caught in nets have become entangled not from the ocean but from the beach side. Harry Mitchell, of the Australian Aerial Patrol, says the nets are "doing a job, but the public should not be given a false sense of security".
His patrol's records have shown "a clear increase" in shark sightings over the past five years. "It's only a matter of time before there's a fatal shark attack on the beaches of NSW - meshed or otherwise," he warns.
A spokesman for the NSW Department of Primary Industries, which is responsible for meshing 51 beaches from Newcastle to Wollongong, says nets have "never been regarded as a means of absolutely preventing any attacks". But he says they help deter sharks from establishing territories.
So far, they have been enough to prevent all but one fatal shark attack in nearly 70 years of operation, a pretty good return.
But some argue they are indiscriminate. Ian Gordon, a marine biologist, says: "In fact, they're too effective, because they also kill smaller sharks, fish, harmless sea creatures. They're essentially walls of death.
"They don't deter [sharks], they kill them. And the downside is they kill everything else that swims as well."
With a mesh size of 50-60 centimetres, the nets often catch whales, dolphins and turtles. Endangered grey nurse sharks are also occasionally killed in nets along with the predatory tigers and great whites.
The department has fitted acoustic "pingers" to all nets to warn off dolphins and whales, and nets are not in place during the winter months, which is whale migration season.
Gordon favours drum lines - large buoys with hooks too big to catch anything smaller than a two-metre shark. Although not used in NSW, these are common in Queensland and were in use at the scene of a fatal attack at the weekend, the first in Queensland's 44-year history of its Shark Safety Program.
Sarah Whiley, 21, died after at after being mauled by three sharks at a North Stradbroke Island beach on Saturday.
The attack hasn't changed Gordon's mind. "Swimming in the ocean is like saying 'I'm going to stand on the Pacific Highway and not be hit by a car,"' he says. "You have to take the risk that something may happen."
While the risk remains very small - a long-term average of about one shark-related death a year in Australia ranks it somewhere below bee stings and being struck by lightning - the bottom line is fatalities.
But since the netting program began in 1937 there has been only one fatal attack on a meshed beach. Which is why, for all the environmental pressure, you suspect politicians will be queueing to pull Australian flags down from Bondi before they take in the shark nets.