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“Hey Taha, what’s the visibility like?” shouts a person with a towel slung over his shoulder.
“Uh, nice,” says Surf Life Saving New South Wales drone operator Taha Kafil-Hussain.
“Good?” the person asks. “Very good,” Kafil-Hussain assures him. Thanking him, the early morning swimmer turns and heads down the steps to Coogee seashore.
Kafil-Hussain, who Guardian Australia has joined on his early morning shark surveillance flight, says: “When they’re local, they just want to see what the weather, what the water looks like, [if there’s] anything scary.”
The 22-year-old has been flying drones for SLS NSW for 4 years, however solely at Coogee seashore for a matter of weeks. Before a shark assault on 34-year-old Sydney trainer and mom Leah Stewart in June, drone surveillance was not permitted at Coogee as a result of it lies instantly underneath the flight path from Sydney airport’s east-west runway.
In an interview with 60 Minutes broadcast on Sunday, Stewart described the horror encounter with a four-metre white shark, after which her left arm was amputated, as “like fighting a dinosaur”. The assault, considered one of a sequence of high-profile incidents in Sydney prior to now 12 months, has prompted the state authorities to massively ramp up its shark mitigation program.
Under a $34m initiative by the state authorities which rolled out on 1 July, 38 of Sydney’s ocean seashores, together with Coogee, now obtain dawn-to-dusk drone monitoring 12 months spherical.
Seventy NSW seashores in complete are a part of the dawn-to-dusk program, whereas others will profit from elevated surveillance all through the summer time and faculty holidays. On Tuesday, surveillance hours will improve, operating from 6.15am to 5pm every day for the beginning of spring, as daylight will increase.
When Guardian Australia meets Kafil-Hussain in mid-winter, he arrives at 6.30am to throw up a marquee, earlier than checking a radio to find out which path the planes are flying in (drone surveillance at Coogee has been allowed with particular permission from the airport).
Not lengthy after, the drone takes off in a whir of plastic from a miniature touchdown pad, rising 60 metres into the air earlier than heading out to sea. During every 20-minute flight, Kafil-Hussain rakes the bay in sections from left to proper, backwards and forwards, leaving a checkerboard sample on his management display screen.
He says he’s searching for “anything moving in a different way than normal”.
“Anything moving against the flow of water, anything that looks a little bit long – anything alive, really.”
He pauses when he thinks he’s noticed one thing, to zoom in. “Looks like seaweed,” he says.
University of Sydney shark coverage knowledgeable and affiliate professor Christopher Pepin-Neff agrees that “drones are the best technology that we have at the moment”.
But they are saying there are “important caveats that we need to give to the public”.
“On days that are windy, if the shark is too small, the drone operator is not going to be able to see a shark if it’s there.
“I’m slightly nervous that, in the absence of [a] large public education campaign, we have the possibility that we’re going to scare the shit out of people,” says Pepin-Neff.
With extra drone surveillance comes extra common shark sightings. The NSW authorities says there have been extra 750 sightings and greater than 200 intervention actions by Surf Life Saving NSW since 1 July.
Shark listening stations are actually monitoring 1,698 white sharks, 938 tiger sharks and 374 bull sharks – the “target sharks” that are most incessantly concerned in critical shark bites.
Kafil-Hussain says he has seen extra bull and tiger sharks than whites, and has raised the alarm a number of instances, most not too long ago for a bronze whaler – concerned in uncommon assaults – which he initially thought was a goal shark.
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If it’s early and he’s on his personal, elevating the alarm means making the decision to clear the water himself – in any other case he shares what he has seen with lifeguards they usually make the choice, with the time from recognizing a hazard to completely clearing the water about two or three minutes.
The SLS drones have a speaker connected to them, permitting him to speak instantly with surfers and swimmers.
It’s a know-how acquainted to followers of the Instagram account Drone Shark App, run by Jason Iggleden, who has been utilizing a drone since 2018 to surveil seashores together with Bondi, Tamarama and Bronte.
Videos on the account present an infinite seal barrel-rolling by way of the water and a swirling vortex of Australian salmon, whereas in one other a whale lingers beneath a kayaker in Tamarama.
“I just had a bit of a vision to help … with getting people out of water with sharks, and just showing them the beauty of what’s out there,” he stated.
The licensed and insured drone flyer, who continues to work independently, now passes on any sightings to SLS NSW. He is a agency believer within the drone surveillance, saying the power to identify goal sharks grows with expertise.
“I don’t think you really need to consider much more than drones, to be honest,” he says.
Pepin-Neff is supportive of different non-lethal applied sciences, reminiscent of SMART drum strains. They say a trial of recent synthetic intelligence detection software program on drones will take the stress off people to discern between extra and fewer harmful sharks. But their message on controversial measures like shark nets, right here to remain on NSW seashores, and culling, is unequivocal: “They do not work.”
Kafil-Hussain, who drives every day from his dwelling in Parramatta, has now flown drones at most Sydney seashores, from Palm Beach within the north to Cronulla within the south. Every seashore is totally different – he sees turtles, dolphins, the occasional whale. Coogee is dwelling to a wobbegong, a low-swimming carpet shark which doesn’t hunt people however can assault if threatened.
“He’s not around. He’ll pop out eventually,” says Kafil-Hussain.
When Guardian Australia visits the seashore, arriving earlier than dawn, it’s already heaving with jap suburbs canine walkers, swim golf equipment and surfers. Just weeks after the assault on Stewart, Kafil-Hussain says numbers on the seashore have solely been rising.
Pepin-Neff says the drone program will “restore confidence” forward of a busy summer time, however there may be “no silver bullet”. “Drones are a great tool but they’re not a perfect solution.”
Pepin-Neff swims at absolutely enclosed seashores, like Marrinawi Cove in Barangaroo, however their recommendation for people who swim at unenclosed seashores: “Swim between the flags.”
“The ocean is the wild and we need to treat the beach like the bush.”
This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its unique location you’ll be able to go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/02/sydneys-beaches-enter-the-drone-age-to-get-swimmers-back-in-the-water-after-spate-of-shark-attacks
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