Over the last 10 years, Australia has averaged 2.1 deaths annually from unprovoked shark attacks. That puts the country’s fatality rate from attacks among the world’s highest. This high death rate has caused some officials and conservation advocates to consider new shark-surveillance systems that would employ artificial intelligence technology to automatically identify sharks in the water—before they reached humans.
The technology is still in very early stages, and many obstacles remain, but supporters of AI-assisted shark surveillance think systems like this might offer a middle ground for Australian political factions that frequently fight over lethal and nonlethal approaches to preventing shark attacks. Since technology start-ups are trying to peddle their innovations to hot spots for human-shark encounters, like California or Cape Town, conservationists also hope that the technology would lower anxieties towards sharks by the public at large. And to do so with minimal invasion to the animals’ natural habitat.
“It is quite obvious that beachgoers and beach recreation will become safer with the shark-mitigation technologies, but it is also important for us not to disturb the marine life in general,” says Nabin Sharma, a lecturer at the University of Technology at Sydney. “This is a win-win situation for both sharks and humans.”
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
