The shark bell at Dunedin’s St Clair Beach has been rung four times in the past fortnight, an unusually busy run for a system that often goes weeks or months without sounding, and locals are pleading with visitors and casual swimmers to actually leave the water when they hear it.
The cast iron bell, mounted on the Esplanade since the 1960s, was installed after a grim run of attacks off the Otago coast. Five people were bitten between 1964 and 1971, three of them fatally. Les Jordan was killed at St Clair in February 1964, Bill Black at neighbouring St Kilda Beach in 1967 and Graham Hitt at Aramoana in 1968. Some scientists at the time suspected a single rogue great white was responsible for the cluster. The bell, which is rung by surf lifesavers when a shark is sighted close to shore, was the city’s response.
Surfing New Zealand chair Jimi Higgins told RNZ that the recent run of activations had exposed a worrying gap between long time locals, who treat the bell as sacrosanct, and newer arrivals who treat it as background noise. “The locals understand what the shark bell is and the significance of the dangers, and they respect it,” he said. “When you do hear the shark bell, or you see people leaving the water because there’s a shark, you should follow suit.”
Higgins told the Otago Daily Times that the problem was not the regulars. “Some of the tourists or students or people who don’t necessarily know the risks are just choosing to ignore the shark bell,” he said. The expectation, he added, was simple. When the alarm goes, “all water users exit the water promptly and calmly.”
So far the encounters have been peaceful. “There’s been no signs of aggression from these shark encounters,” Higgins said. The most recent visitor was almost certainly a broadnose sevengill shark, the species most often seen along the southern coast. Sevengills are large but typically curious rather than confrontational, and they live year round in the harbours and shallow water from Otago down to Stewart Island. They have a habit of circling surfboards once or twice before drifting back out.
University of Otago marine science fellow Rob Lewis said the cluster of sightings was eye catching but should not be read as a sign of anything dramatic. “It’s certainly interesting that there has been lots of sightings back-to-back, but I wouldn’t call it unusual,” he said. Lewis stressed that sharks were a healthy part of the local ecosystem. “Sharks are incredibly important to the health of the ecosystem,” he said.
That view is shared by Auckland Museum curator of marine biology Clinton Duffy, one of the country’s best known shark scientists. “We have a very, very low shark bite rate in New Zealand and even lower incidence of fatal shark attacks,” he told RNZ. New Zealand averages around one to two shark bites a year nationwide, and most years pass with no serious injury at all. The country’s last fatal attack was off Muriwai in 2013.
Veteran St Clair surfer Mark Stevenson, who has been paddling out at the beach for half a century, said the recent flurry of sightings had not changed his routine, but had reminded him to keep his head up. “They’re in the ocean, we can’t fool ourselves. They’re out there all the time, even when you can’t see them,” he said. He recalled one personal encounter where instinct kicked in before sight did. “You get that feeling, and I looked down and seen this black object moving around.”
The bell’s recent workout comes at a time when New Zealand’s relationship with sharks is being quietly rewritten. Shark nets, which were once strung off popular beaches in Dunedin and elsewhere, were removed more than a decade ago after years of debate about their cost, their tendency to entangle dolphins, rays and protected species, and questions about whether they actually reduced bite risk in cold New Zealand water. The bell, an air horn at the lifesaving tower and the willingness of one surfer to wave another out of the lineup are now the main early warning system on the south coast.
Officials are using the current activity to remind people of the basics of sharing the water with a top predator. Avoid dawn and dusk, when sharks feed and visibility is poor. Stay out of murky or stirred up water after heavy rain. Watch for birds working over schools of bait fish, because where the small fish are, the bigger ones follow. Do not swim alone, do not swim far from shore, and if you see a fin or a dark shape, leave the water without splashing.
For Higgins, the more boring piece of advice is the most important one. If the bell rings, the answer is not to crane your neck for a glimpse, it is to paddle in. “The locals understand what the shark bell is and the significance of the dangers and they respect it and listen to it,” he said. “However, a lot of the student population or tourists don’t really pay much attention to it.” Surf Life Saving New Zealand has asked beachgoers to follow lifeguards’ instructions immediately if the bell sounds, and not to re-enter the water until the all-clear has been given.
St Clair will keep filling up through the rest of the autumn as the swell stays clean and the water cools, and the sevengills, by all accounts, will keep cruising the bay. The bell has been there for sixty years for a reason. The plea from those who know the beach best is simply that, when it rings, it should still mean something.
Have you been at St Clair recently when the bell has sounded, or do you think New Zealand needs to think harder about how it shares the water with sharks? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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