• More drones = more sightings, not more danger, but every sighting fuels fear.
• Constant alarms erode confidence, pushing people out of the ocean.
• Drone use doesn’t match real beach use, missing how and when the community actually swims.

By Andre Slade – Owner, Ocean Swims

For years, the loudest call in the shark-mitigation conversation has been simple and emotive: more eyes in the sky. More drones, more coverage, more safety.

It sounds logical. Reassuring, even.

But like most simple answers in the ocean, it ignores the current beneath the surface.

I swam at Bondi Beach almost every day for 15 summers. Much of that time was with OceanFit’s ocean swimming groups. Thousands of swims. Early mornings, late afternoons, glassy days, lumpy days, the full Bondi spectrum.

In all of that time, I never once saw a shark.

Were there sharks at Bondi? Of course there were. They were always there. They were doing their thing, and we were doing ours.

But we weren’t reckless. We didn’t swim on dark, dirty days. We didn’t swim when bait balls were getting smashed in close. We paid attention. We used local knowledge. We made judgement calls, quietly and collectively, without hysteria.

Then along came the Shark Drone App guy. In the air with his drone, day after day, and in many ways setting the template for what followed.

Daily videos. Sharks everywhere. Every angle, every pass, every clip pushed hard on social media.

Suddenly, Bondi was “full of sharks”. Not because anything had changed in the water, but because the lens had changed.

And once that imagery existed, it was irresistible. Mainstream media, always hungry for shark content, amplified it further, turning routine sightings into headlines and reinforcing the idea that sharks were suddenly everywhere.

To be fair, over time, the tone of that content has softened. It’s become less alarmist, more educational, and in parts genuinely respectful of sharks and their role in the ecosystem, which is a good thing. But the early impact was already done.

I know, without a shred of doubt, that those early videos broke a lot of innocent swimmers’ confidence. The more traction the posts got, the more fear took hold. The more fear, the fewer people showed up. And the ocean, which had once been a place of routine and freedom, slowly became something to be managed, monitored, and feared.

Did Bondi suddenly have more sharks? No.

What changed was visibility, amplification, and commentary.

Fast-forward a few years, and now we have commercial drone programs, flown by Surf Life Saving, operating across major beaches throughout the day.

So yes, of course they’re finding sharks. If you look constantly, you will see them.

But this is where the conversation needs to mature.

Who is flying these drones? What lived ocean experience do they have? How do they distinguish between a docile shark passing through and one that poses a genuine risk? How do they read behaviour, not just presence? Direction, intent, context?

Who sets the policy? Who educates the public on what a sighting actually means? And who is making the call on when an alarm goes off, knowing the psychological impact that decision carries?

It’s worth saying this clearly. For many ocean swimmers, particularly those who swim early in the morning, not having drones overhead may actually be preferable. These swimmers already rely on experience, conditions, and local knowledge, and they tend to make conservative, informed choices about when and where they swim.

Yet even when drones aren’t flying at those hours, the constant daytime surveillance, alarms, and media commentary don’t stay neatly contained. They bleed into the confidence of off-hours swimmers. The anxiety doesn’t switch off when the drone does.

I was at Manly Beach on the weekend, and you can feel it. Even though time has passed since the period of heightened shark activity, the community is still on edge.

The hard-core swimmers are there, because they always are. But there are fewer of them. The broader swimming community is missing. Groups that would normally be out the back are hugging the gutter. Mid-morning, the alarm goes. The water is cleared. Anxiety spikes again. The “threat” remains, unresolved.

And it raises a confronting question.

How long are we willing to live like this?

Because this is a slippery slope. More drones mean more sightings. More sightings mean more alarms. More alarms mean more fear. And more fear means fewer people participating in ocean swimming and ocean sports.

That is not a neutral outcome.

Ocean swimmers are one of the most consistent user groups of our beaches, yet we are largely absent from this conversation. Politicians have little understanding of how the ocean is actually used. Surf lifesaving organisations understandably welcome increased funding. But swimmers, the people in the water day after day, season after season, are rarely considered when policy is shaped.

If you don’t believe me, look at drone flying times and patrol hours. They’re built around a 9–5 model that suits administration and optics, not real community use. Early mornings and late afternoons, before and after work, are when swimmers are there, and when the system largely switches off.

We all want to feel safe. That’s human.

But safety driven by constant surveillance, rather than understanding and context, comes at a cost. Confidence erodes. Participation drops. The ocean shifts from something we respect to something we fear.

So yes, be careful what you wish for.

Because more drones don’t automatically equal more safety. Too often, they simply amplify anxiety, change behaviour, and quietly push people out of the water, away from the very place that once gave them confidence, calm, and a sense of freedom.