Conservation

In the late 1980s we began to notice a decline in the population of the Grey Nurse Sharks that inhabit our area. Ron, together with Phil Bowman and the late Noel Hitchins fought a tireless campaign against the NSW government and its many bureaucrats to get the Grey Nurse Sharks’ plight recognised.

Finally after many years of effort, the Grey Nurse Sharks were declared "critically endangered" (one step away from extinction) and after another long campaign by the diving community for action by the NSW Government, they finally put into place protection zones at some of the declared critical habitat areas.

There is still, however, a long way to go to continue to preserve the Grey Nurse Shark population.

Grey nurse sharks have that classic shark biology that puts them so at risk:

• they produce few offspring (roughly 1 - 2 pups every 2 years)
  
• are slow to mature
  
• late to reproduce
  

This means their populations take a long time to recover from historical depletions, and once populations have crashed, they need all the help they can get just to survive.

Illegal fishing in the Marine Park Critical Habitat Zones still continues, despite rigorous policing by Dive Centres, Fisheries, and Marine Parks.

Another threat we've seen emerge over the last couple of years is irresponsible divers encroaching on the Grey Nurse Shark Aggregation areas, sometimes even alleged dive professionals/ backyard dive operations have been known to chase the Grey Nurses to film them for social media (no one thinks you're cool FYI). Unfortunately this disruption to the aggregation zones can be really damaging to our shark populations, as it can stop the sharks from breeding and reproducing. And with the Grey nurse being a frankly useless breeder, they need optimal conditions to ensure their population continues to recover.

To ensure you don't disturb the GNS, please have a look over the code of conduct below. We will add here, that if your diving or snorkelling/ spearfishing is scaring the sharks, e.g. they're darting away, changing their swimming direction, cracking their tails, that's a red flag! If you are diving and snorkelling calmly and not disturbing them at all, the sharks will swim placidly beside you and around you, and you can share the ocean peacefully and respectfully.