Ep 4 | Prof. Charlie Huveneers | Shark Deterrents, Population Debate & Risk | Crossing the Tideline

Charlie Huveneers is a researcher and lecturer at Flinders University in South Australia, and one of the leading names in shark bite mitigation science in this country. For close to 20 years his team has been doing the fieldwork that most people only read about, testing deterrents on live sharks, studying Great White behaviour and trying to answer the questions that coastal communities are actually asking.This one gets into the practical stuff. We go through what the research actually shows on electric deterrents, how effective they are, how they were tested and what their limitations are. We also get into the population debate, what the data can and cannot tell us about whether Great White numbers are increasing, why those big discrepancies in population estimates exist, and why Charlie himself has grown to distrust the blanket statistics often used to reassure the public.That last point stuck with me. Here is someone who has spent two decades in this field, and he openly says the stats can be misleading and are not helpful for people who are in the water regularly in high risk areas. That felt important to hear from someone in his position.We also cover species management, the gap between what science knows and what gets communicated to ocean users, and what he thinks still needs to happen before we are anywhere near a real solution.No silver bullet yet. But a much clearer picture of where things actually stand.