Imminent threat
Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett said his state, which has now suffered 14 shark attack fatalities since 2000, was in shock at the latest deaths.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the number of shark attacks and fatalities from shark attack has increased quite significantly over recent years,” he told reporters in Perth.
Barnett said a number of measures were deployed, including the aerial patrols, to alert swimmers to sharks.
But the catching and killing of the predators has long proved controversial.
A previous trial involving baited hooks attached to floating drum lines to snare sharks was abandoned after objections from conservationists and marine scientists.
Barnett said, however, that the government would always err on the side of public safety and reserved the right to destroy a shark if it posed an imminent threat.
Last Wednesday, a 4.2-metre shark was caught near to where surfer Ben Gerring lost his leg off Falcon Beach, 115 kilometres south of yesterday’s attack near Mindarie, but it is unclear if it was the animal that attacked him.
Deadly attacks are relatively rare, according to the International Shark Attack File, which in February reported only six fatalities worldwide last year, including one in Australia.
In yesterday’s incident, the woman’s dive partner told police they were in the water together when he felt something brush past him.
He spun around but did not find anything and decided to head to the surface where he “saw a commotion”.
The man and his rescuers then managed to retrieve the woman, but she died from her injuries, police said.