A ban on drones will be temporarily lifted at Coogee Beach to allow Surf Life Saving NSW to scan for sharks following a terrifying attack that left a woman fighting for her life in hospital.
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) bans drones from being flown at Coogee because the beach is in the flight path of commercial airlines, but granted a temporary exemption on Sunday in response to the attack.
Minister for Agriculture Tara Moriarty said the government would work to make the exemption permanent.
“We’re working with Surf Life Saving New South Wales to make sure that we can embrace this technology above our beaches,” she said.
Moriarty said the government was funding Surf Life Saving NSW to train staff to pilot drones and for the purchase of two new drones.
Aviation expert Neil Hansford said he couldn’t see why the exemption couldn’t be made permanent, so long as the exemption was for Surf Life Saving NSW or emergency services, and manned by qualified pilots.
“You can’t use drones at Coogee because it’s under the flight path onto the short runway at Mascot. This sort of ban is not uncommon,” he said.
“[But] if they accepted a fixed rule not to fly them above, say 500 feet or 1000 feet, and limited them to that, I think it would be easily negotiated. One thousand feet would be very safe.”
Hansford stressed the ban needed to remain in place for recreational pilots.
“People flying drones have flown into the path of helicopters … they’re a bloody nuisance.”
Moriarty said
The shark mitigation programme that we’ve been running as a government is very different over the last 12 months than it has been over the last few years, and it will be different again in the next 12 months as we embrace drones, particularly drones that use AI and that are unmanned, and as we embrace this technology, we want to make sure that it can be available on every beach, so that that access by CASA has been granted today, and we’ll work with them to make sure that that’s permanent.
Moriarty wouldn’t rule out seeking advice on shark culls, however stressed the focus would be on technology.
She said the government’s shark mitigation program would evolve over the next year as the government embraced the use of unmanned AI drones
“We want to make sure that it can be available on every beach,” she said.
More to come.
Amber Schultz is a crime and justice reporter with The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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