Adelaide University researcher Juliana Gleaves found that people who knew more about sharks reported less fear and showed greater support for efforts to save them. Her research explores how encounters with sharks and media coverage shape people’s views of the animals and their conservation.
What the research examines
Gleaves’s study focuses on conservation psychology. Next, she’ll examine how films and news reports influence people’s views of sharks, then use virtual reality to see whether an immersive experience changes those views. Participants will be able to “swim” with sharks behaving neutrally. The study will assess whether the experience encourages more positive views and greater concern for shark conservation.
Gleaves said Jaws sparked her fascination with sharks, though she conceded the film wasn’t great for their public relations. Robert Shaw played Quint, the shark hunter. The article says there are 500 shark species and their overall numbers have fallen 70 per cent since the 1970s. It also reports that global shark numbers have plummeted by more than 70 per cent since Jaws was released in 1975.
Risk, attacks and policy
Australia’s fifth fatal shark attack for 2026 occurred in Perth the previous month. Western Australia’s fisheries minister ruled out a widespread cull, saying it wouldn’t be appropriate, but issued a “catch and kill” order for the shark responsible. Australia recorded five fatal attacks and 23 shark bite incidents in total in 2025.
Surfers Duncan Chamberlain and Mal Biscoe said people who regularly use the ocean tend to have a more realistic view of shark attack risks. Chamberlain, 74, has surfed for 54 years and enters the Southern Ocean from his hometown beach at Middleton, south of Adelaide, three or four times a week. When he encounters sharks, he follows a 20-minute rule: he goes ashore and presumes they’ve moved along the coast before returning to the water.
“You go in [to shore] for 20 minutes and you presume they're cruising along the coast, so they've moved on by then, so you go back out,” Chamberlain said. “If you look at the statistics, you're in far more danger driving to the beach on the roads.”
Gleaves’s initial study found surfers were more likely to worry about sunburn than sharks. Biscoe, who has surfed for more than 30 years and runs his own surf school, agreed. A firefighter who had just returned from fighting Canadian forest fires, he said assessing risk came naturally to him. He saw no comparison between the risk of a shark encounter and surfing’s physical and mental health benefits.
Surfers’ encounters and the moth report
Biscoe estimated he’d had about eight shark encounters over the years, including sharks swimming under or around him and sharks appearing in the distance. In his closest encounter, a harmless wobbegong climbed onto his friend’s back while they were surfing. “We had a laugh about it and then we're like, 'I wonder what scared it out of the water?' But I've never had an incident where I feel threatened,” he said.
Biscoe said some students mention sharks during surf lessons. He tells them they’re more likely to step on a ray or be injured by their own board than by a shark. He said he believed surfers were generally environmentally aware and concerned about sharks, dolphins, whales, rays and fish.
The separate report about moth swarms in southeast Australia couldn’t be verified using the available source fetches. Neither fetch attempt returned article content from its URL, so details about the moths or a possible recovery of an endangered species couldn’t be confirmed.