Fifty years ago, Jaws scared millions out of the water and forever changed the way we see sharks. The 1975 blockbuster was – and remains – a cultural phenomenon. But it also casts sharks as villains, embedding fear in the public imagination where fascination should have lived.
For some of us, though, that fear sparked a lifelong obsession – and I count myself among the lucky ones who turned that fascination into a mission to protect them.
Half a century later, the real threat isn’t lurking in the shallows, it’s floating down the corridors of power in the form of outdated and inconsistent nature laws. Australia’s weak nature laws aren’t doing what they should; stopping the quiet extinction crisis unfolding beneath the waves.
In fact, you might be unwittingly eating part of that extinction for dinner.
Endangered Shark for Dinner
In Australia, flake — often sold in fish and chips — is a generic term for shark meat. It should only refer to two species, gummy or rig shark (which are not threatened species), but alarmingly it can be applied to endangered species including school shark, scalloped hammerhead or even something rarer. Because of loopholes and lax labelling laws, there’s no way to know. Our nature laws allow threatened species of shark and ray to be caught, killed and sold — even species that scientists say are sliding toward extinction.
One of the biggest failures of Australia’s national environmental law — the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) — is the “Conservation Dependent” category. It sounds helpful, but it’s a conservation dead end.
All species listed as “Conservation Dependent” are, in reality, endangered – but they are placed in this category to allow continued commercial exploitation. It means a species listed as threatened can still be legally fished, provided there’s a management plan in place. But these plans simply have not worked for sharks and there is no measurable recovery in any of these species, with some like the school shark still experiencing overfishing. The fundamental issue is that the actions within these ‘plans’ are not legally enforced and can often be vague. It’s like putting a band-aid on a severed fin and calling it recovery.
Five of Australia’s endemic sharks and rays — those found nowhere else on Earth — are now up for listing under Australia’s deeply flawed environmental laws. On one hand, these species should be listed as “Vulnerable” to “Critically Endangered” and protected from targeted fishing – especially as there is currently no management plan in place. On the other hand, there’s a real risk they’ll be slotted into the so-called “conservation dependent” category, which still allows them to be legally caught, filleted and sold as “flake” — wrapped in butcher’s paper or dropped into deep fryers across the country. It’s already happening: the endangered greeneye spurdog, an endemic species, was recently found on sale as flake in a Victorian fish shop.
These endemics are ancient, true-blue Australian species, that are slow to reproduce and highly vulnerable. Once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.
Time for Strong Nature Laws
Australia takes pride in its iconic wildlife — koalas, platypuses, leafy sea dragons. But beneath the surface, our marine species are vanishing faster than most people realise, and our national nature laws are failing to keep pace. The EPBC Act was written before smartphones, before back-to-back mass coral bleaching, before Australia reached peak shark fishing in the early 2000s, and before we fully understood the scale of marine biodiversity loss. Everyone agrees it’s overdue for an overhaul — and now, with Minister Murray “Mr Fixer” Watt at the helm, it looks like new laws will be introduced this term.
But what frightens me more than a great fish moving silently through dark waters is the risk that the Albanese Government delivers laws that favour development over genuine environmental protection.
It’s a plotline straight out of Jaws — like the Mayor of Amity who sent swimmers back into the water for tourist dollars, sacrificing protection for short-term gain.
Just before the last election, we saw how easily the current EPBC Act was weakened to support the salmon industry — effectively signing an extinction warrant for another endemic, the Maugean skate. We can’t afford another sequel where political convenience trumps ecological survival.
We need strong national nature laws that actually protect wildlife — not ones that monitor threatened species into extinction. That means scrapping the farce of “conservation dependent” listings, listing threatened species under their rightful category, and enforcing recovery plans with real power to make sure protections are driven by science, not industry pressure.
Fifty years after Jaws, maybe it’s time we stopped fearing sharks — and started fearing a future without them.
References
- Kielniacz, Teagan J. Parker, Adam J. Stow, and Nicolette C. Armansin. “High Levels of Mislabelling of Shark Flesh in Australian Fish Markets and Seafood Shops.” Marine and Freshwater Research 75, no. 7 (May 6, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1071/MF23198.
- Sharrad, Ashleigh E., Patrick Reis-Santos, Jeremy Austin, and Bronwyn M. Gillanders. “Umbrella Terms Conceal the Sale of Threatened Shark Species: A DNA Barcoding Approach.” Food Control 148 (June 1, 2023): 109606. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2023.109606.
- Dominguez-Martinez, Rosa Mar, Leslie Roberson, Jessica Gephart, Chris Wilcox, Glenn Sant, and Carissa Klein. “Environmental Law Reform Needed to Manage Trade of Australia’s Threatened Marine Species.” Npj Ocean Sustainability 3, no. 1 (September 30, 2024): 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-024-00085-3.
- Butler, I., H Patterson, D Bromhead, D Galeano, T Timmiss, J Woodhams, and R Curtotti. Fishery Status Reports 2024. Canberra, Australia: Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, 2024. https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/research-topics/fisheries/fishery-status.
- Kielniacz, Teagan J. Parker, Adam J. Stow, and Nicolette C. Armansin. “High Levels of Mislabelling of Shark Flesh in Australian Fish Markets and Seafood Shops.” Marine and Freshwater Research 75, no. 7 (May 6, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1071/MF23198.