Within hours of a 63-year-old man being killed by a shark off Perth’s Sorrento Beach, an operation was launched to find the 6m great white believed to be responsible.
Western Australia Fisheries Minister Jackie Jarvis authorised the killing of the great white believed to have attacked Greg O’Neill, describing the order as a response.
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The hunt marked what is believed to be the first catch-and-kill order issued in WA in about a decade.
Capture gear, a form of drumline normally used to tag sharks, was deployed about 1.5km offshore but within just days the operation was called off.
The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development said there had been no evidence of shark activity and the chance of catching the shark had diminished.
The operation may have ended without a catch, but it has raised a much bigger question about what such orders can achieve.
According to fish behaviour expert Professor Culum Brown, finding the right shark is far from straightforward.
“It is very difficult,” the Macquarie University academic told 7NEWS.com.au.
The first challenge is that the moment an attack happens, authorities are already racing to find a shark capable of travelling large distances.
Authorities begin with eyewitness accounts, but Brown said people who witness an attack often only get a fleeting glimpse of the animal.
In the WA case, the decision to issue the catch-and-kill order was based on what the government described as the circumstances of the attack, the hazard posed by the shark, and the potential recovery of coronial evidence.