Contractors with the dead shark at Bondi yesterday. Picture: Nick Wenham Source: Supplied

AS a 2.5m-long great white shark was hauled from a net and on to a boat off Bondi Beach in Sydney yesterday, Doron Milner was swimming with his mates less than 100m away.

“I recognised the boat and joked to my friend, ‘Hope they’re not pulling in anything too big’. We had a bit of a laugh,” said Mr Milner, who has been swimming off the beach most days for 25 years. Further out from shore than usual, he did swim back towards the beach, as he was “a bit nervous”.

Department of Primary Industries contractors found the dead male shark in the nets during a routine inspection.

Mr Milner, a lifeguard at North Bondi, said although the nets were staggered, with gaps in between, they were effective.

“They stop (the sharks) from setting up breeding grounds. They can get through, but it ­deters them,” he said.

Great whites are on the endangered list so the shark would probably have been released if it had been alive.

“(The nets) are not designed to create a total ­barrier between bathers and sharks,” a DPI spokeswoman said. Contractors checked the nets at least every 72 hours in order to protect the two million people who swam at nearby beaches every year, she said , just three weeks before more than 2000 swimmers are due to compete in the annual Macquarie Bondi to Bronte Ocean Swim charity event.

Event director Stephen Ford isn’t put off. “Three years ago we had that red algae and a few years before that some other marine life (jellyfish) were getting too friendly with swimmers,” Mr Ford said. “I was at Bondi on the weekend doing my training and there were about 30 or 40 people out there doing it — we’re not concerned.”

No one has been killed by a shark at Bondi since 1937, and the last attack was in January 2010, when a surfer’s arm was mauled.

Some 47 Australians have been killed off NSW by sharks in the past century. The actress Marcia Hathaway was killed by a shark in Sydney Harbour’s Middle Harbour in 1963.

Mr Milner is not deterred. “I’m going for a surf this afternoon,” he said yesterday.

source: theaustralian.com