Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

To swim or not to swim, that is the question. Certainly, in and around Sydney in as many weeks have lodged doubts in a few Sydneysiders' minds. "Shark attacks leave city in fear," screamed Sydney's The Daily Telegraph this morning. A tabloid touch of poetic license, perhaps, but it may be on to something.

I happened to be at a Stag event - or buck's party, as they are called here - on Saturday afternoon, which started in the surf at Bondi. It's the kind of event where normally there would be no shortage of beer-fuelled bravado or dare-devil Dutch courage on display, but when someone suggested a headland-to-headland ocean swim there weren't many takers.

By strange coincidence, my mate's bride-to-be started her hen event with a surf at Avalon, on Sydney's northern beaches. It was there, early on Sunday morning, that a shark attacked a 15 year-old boy. The teenager suffered severe lacerations to his upper thigh, and might have been in an even more serious condition had it not been for the presence - and presence of mind - of his father, a gold medallion surf lifesaver, who immediately applied a tourniquet to his son's bleeding leg.

Not long after dawn this morning, I went down to Bondi to see if anyone had been put off by the latest attack, which came a fortnight after a mauling at Australia's most iconic beach, the first in 80 years. But the surf life-savers reckoned there were just as many people in the water as normal. One swimmer told me he was more worried about the blue bottles, while another suggested there was more to fear from the loutish "red lobsters" - the drunken British and Irish backpackers. Sure enough, a little way down the beach a few of my compatriots presented themselves in a somewhat tired and emotional state, having consumed a six-pack of stubbies for breakfast. The real sharks, said another, were at Bondi Junction, a shopping centre up the hill.

One surfer said he had once seen a shark, and added with classic Australian understatement: "Ah....it makes you get out of the water pretty fast." Perhaps that feeds into the lively discussion below by giving us another insight into the Australian character.

What is behind this wave of attacks? Some experts say that the cleaner waters in and around Sydney - particular in the harbour - have attracted more fish and with them more sharks. But Professor Ross Coleman of the University of Sydney reckons we have witnessed a "statistical anomaly".

"You're probably something like 200 times more likely to suffer a car accident on the way to the beach than being bitten by a shark," he says. Shark numbers are actually in decline, which is why they are a protected species, and they don't target humans per se. They not only rely on chemicals in the water and electrical pulses to identify their prey, but also taste. "You're not going to know its food unless you try and taste it," says Professor Coleman. "So often these animals aren't trying to eat a human or aren't trying to eat a surfer. They're seeing whether this is potential food or not."

I've learnt a bit about shark nets over the past couple of weeks. They're meant as a deterrent rather than a shark-proof barrier, and the aim to disrupt the sharks and to prevent them from staking out territory. Obviously, they don't stretch all the away along the coast, but most beaches have them and they're regularly moved to keep the sharks on their toes, or the anatomically correct version of that.

So a simple question: would you venture into the waters?

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