A family is grieving and alongside them, the community of Little Bay shares this grief. Indeed, I know others across the country are grieving in their own way, as am I as I sit writing this. Survivors of shark bites, some of whom I am privileged to call friends, are having their own experiences - confronted with a reminder of their own traumatic event that changed their lives forever. Wednesday’s fatal shark bite has affected us all.

As local communities, as individuals, as scientists, as conservationists, and as political leaders, we are presented with a challenge like no other, with an animal like no other. How do we protect human life from an animal in a dominion that is not ours but theirs? Yet, it’s this dominion, the ocean, that many of us identify with as a part of our being - for play, for respite, for adventure - and feel some need to “control″⁣. We feel the need to control the shark, but do we have the right?

Sharks have roamed the oceans for nearly 450 million years and typically occupy the top of the food chain as apex predators, keeping food webs healthy and in check. Without sharks, food webs can become unstable and potentially collapse, ultimately impacting the very seafood that lands on our plates.

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Sharks occupy a special part of the human psyche, inspiring equal amounts of fear, admiration, and respect. Although many of us are aware of their importance in marine ecosystems and acknowledge the ocean is not our home, when we humans meet a shark the outcome can be far from desirable. Sharks polarise opinion, divide communities, and drive political agendas like no other animal in Australia.

Shark bites are traumatic accidents which, while rare, require thoughtful, evidence-based action by governments and communities to reduce their occurrence. Empathy, respect and clear communication are crucial – it’s an emotionally charged event for local communities and the feeling of anger is perfectly understandable.

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So, what solutions do we have to improve beach safety? Fundamental to any strategy is community education and awareness. Complementary tools include spotter drones (which have the added benefit of spotting people at risk of drowning, a far bigger killer at Australian beaches). We can also use personal shark deterrent devices that reduce the chance of an interaction with a white shark by around 60 per cent, and tagging programs to track sharks in real-time to facilitate beach warnings and enable us to better understand how and why they move where they do. There’s no silver bullet to preventing a shark bite, our approach has to be comprehensive and multi-pronged to reduce the risk of a fatal shark bite as much as possible

New South Wales and Queensland are the only Australian jurisdictions where a lethal component of