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02/01/2005: "Swimming with Sharks ......... the art of underwater modeling."

Jocelyn Edwards is a confident diver and an excellent underwater model, shown here at Seal Rocks NSW with some of the once again 'vanishing grey nurse'.

At times these sharks make an amazing comeback, as they did in 1988 when overnight hundreds re-appeared at Seal Rocks from what all thought was a brink of extinction.

This re-appearance did not alter the pre-planned script of a 'big budget' international TV documentary proceeding with the demise of the species theme, surprisingly at a time when we'd never seen so many sharks. The script, I was told, was inspired by my pictures and text titled "Vanishing Grey Nurse" published in Sea Frontiers eighteen months earlier, and amazingly still quoted recently to validate the extinction cause.

Grey nurse sharks were mis-represented in the early 1960's as maneaters, by late 1965 no informed expert subscribed to this 'now out-of-date opinion'.

Well-intending marine authors have since plagiarised the pre-1988 situation in what has become a perpetuating myth, (that spearfishermen were largely responsible) for the demise of the grey nurse.

Several additional factors indeed need consideration; variations in natural food supply being an obvious one, semi-professional journalists 'won't spoil a good story with an ugly fact', the myth of spearmen eliminating a shark species continues today, but mostly by word-of-mouth.

It may in time be learned that grey nurse sharks move off into more secluded and deeper new territories to avoid the well-intending but highly inquisitive scuba 'travellers'. In other words we are frightening them away.

The protection of the species does serve a good purpose many were being hooked on fishermens lines around popular scuba dive shop locations especially along the NSW coast.

Footnote Distribution of the grey nurse shark has recently been reported from new and much wider areas. Broome (WA), Christmas Island, PNG, and on the east coast, Lady Musgrave Island.

It would seem a broader migration pattern exists which may prove the original 'brink of extinction' tabloid reports (by me and others) as false and over-the-top.