Sydney beaches enter drone age to get swimmers back after shark attacks

Coogee beach was previously not permitted to use drone surveillance because it lies directly under the flight path from Sydney airport's east-west runway, but it was approved after Leah Stewart, a 34-year-old teacher and mother, was attacked in June. Stewart, whose left arm was amputated, described the encounter with a four-metre white shark as "like fighting a dinosaur" in an interview broadcast on 60 Minutes. The attack was one of a series of high-profile incidents in Sydney in the past 12 months.

Taha Kafil-Hussain, a 22-year-old drone operator for Surf Life Saving New South Wales, has been flying drones for the organisation for four years but only at Coogee for a few weeks. He told Guardian Australia that locals just want to see what the weather and water look like, and "anything scary". During each 20-minute flight, he scans the bay in sections from left to right, looking for "anything moving in a different way than normal" – anything against the flow of water, anything a bit long, anything alive. He recently raised the alarm for a bronze whaler, which he initially thought was a target shark.

Seventy NSW beaches in total are part of the dawn-to-dusk program, while others will benefit from increased surveillance throughout the summer and school holidays. Christopher Pepin-Neff, a shark policy expert and associate professor at the University of Sydney, agreed that drones are the best technology currently available, but said there are important caveats: on windy days or if the shark is too small, a drone operator may not be able to see it. They also expressed concern that, without a large public education campaign, the increased surveillance might scare people.

The NSW government said there have been more than 750 shark sightings and more than 200 intervention actions by Surf Life Saving NSW since 1 July. Shark listening stations are now tracking 1,698 white sharks, 938 tiger sharks and 374 bull sharks, the "target sharks" most frequently involved in serious bites.

If a hazard is spotted, the time from detection to fully clearing the water is about two or three minutes. The drones have speakers that allow operators to communicate directly with surfers and swimmers.

Jason Iggleden, who runs the Instagram account Drone Shark App, has been using a drone since 2018 to survey beaches including Bondi, Tamarama and Bronte. He passes on sightings to Surf Life Saving NSW and is a firm believer in drone surveillance, saying the ability to spot target sharks grows with experience.