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Courts / Western Australia

'Needle in haystack': Expert says little chance of finding shark that killed Greg O'Neill

ABC News
1 min read Rewritten in plain language

Shark AttacksCrimeEmergency ServicesDisasters Accidents and Emergency Incidents

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  • WA Fisheries Minister Jackie Jarvis on Saturday took an "extraordinary" step of issuing a catch-and-kill order for the shark that killed Greg James O'Neill at Sorrento Beach in Perth's north.
  • Mr Brown said he believed a better response would be to invest more funds in shark-spotting drones, an approach the New South Wales government took after a shark attack at Sydney's Coogee Beach in June.
  • On Sunday, WA Deputy Premier Rita Saffioti said she "100 per cent" supported Ms Jarvis's response to the attack, including the catch-and-kill order.

3 sentences from our version of the report, chosen to cover it. Nothing here is written; every line is in the article below. How

Mr Brown said he believed a better response would be to invest more funds in shark-spotting drones.

The report’s most important sentence, shortened and in plain words. How

Headline check

One of the two things this headline claims is not in the report.

  • The headline puts “Needle in haystack” in quotation marks. Nobody says those words anywhere in the report.

Figures, names and quoted words in the headline, looked for in the report itself — not in the summary above. How this is checked

A behavioural biologist and shark drone expert has criticised the WA government's response to the state's most recent fatal shark attack.

WA Fisheries Minister Jackie Jarvis on Saturday took an "extraordinary" step of issuing a catch-and-kill order for the shark that killed Greg James O'Neill at Sorrento Beach in Perth's north.

Culum Brown, from Macquarie University's Ecology and Evolution of Fishes Laboratory, said the chances of finding the shark responsible for Mr O'Neill's death were like finding "a needle in a haystack".

The only way to determine whether a shark is responsible, according to Mr Brown, is to kill and gut it to see if it has human remains in it.

Mr Brown said he believed a better response would be to invest more funds in shark-spotting drones, an approach the New South Wales government took after a shark attack at Sydney's Coogee Beach in June.

The Fisheries Minister Ms Jarvis added that deploying more drones to spot sharks along WA's large coastline was "absolutely under consideration".

Mr O'Neill was swimming close to the Sorrento Beach shoreline when a suspected three-metre great white took him on Friday morning.

On Sunday, WA Deputy Premier Rita Saffioti said she "100 per cent" supported Ms Jarvis's response to the attack, including the catch-and-kill order.

Shortened to 1 minute of reading, this version reads 5.8 on the Niral Score.

You are reading our version, not theirs. This is ABC News's report shortened to its most important sentences, in plainer words, with verdicts and loaded words taken out. Plain description stays, and so do adjectives that carry a fact, such as "former" or "federal". The reporting, the facts and the quotations are theirs — quotations are never edited — and the indicators beside it measure this version. Hover or tap Adjectives to see every one left in the text.

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Outlet Niral ScoreAdjectivesSourcingSentimentGenderHappiness
ABC Newsas they published this story 8.2 7 83 -0.7 2.3 24.5
Mundane Readneutralized from ABC News 6.9 7 83 -0.7 0 24.5

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