THIS is the 2.7-metre white pointer shark pulled from nets off Nobbys Beach this week.
The shark was discovered a day after Newcastle Lord Mayor John Tate called for more information on the shark mesh following recent sightings that forced the closure of the city's most famous beach.
This exclusive picture shows the dead female being retrieved from the net on Wednesday by shark mesh contractor Paul Holbert.
Mr Holbert said yesterday it was not uncommon to pull predators of this size from the mesh off beaches.
Newcastle City Council voted this week to lobby Minister for Primary Industries Ian Macdonald to release information on shark net conditions and maintenance.
Shark nets are inspected and maintained between September 1 and April 30 and are situated 500 metres off-shore in front of surf clubs at most popular NSW beaches.
The Department of Primary Industries would not say yesterday how many sharks were caught in nets off Newcastle.
But records show that since 2000 an average of 108 sharks a year were netted in NSW with 92 caught off the Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong coast in the summer of 2007-08.
The Nobbys white pointer, estimated to be about 2.7 metres long, is about the same size as the bull shark believed to have mauled navy diver Paul de Gelder in Sydney Harbour on February 11.
Mr de Gelder lost a hand and a leg in the attack.
The next day, a 2.5 metre white pointer severed the hand of surfer Glenn Orgias at Bondi Beach. A white pointer of similar size was also blamed for the March 1 attack on teenager Andrew Lindop as he surfed with his father at North Avalon Beach.
The Nobbys shark is believed to have been caught in the net for several days before it was spotted by a Westpac rescue helicopter crew training over the beach on Wednesday afternoon.
Senior researcher at the CSIRO in Hobart Dr Barry Bruce, who has been studying shark movements for 20 years, said the shark's size was at the upper end of the scale for waters off Hunter shores.
"What drives the movement of these sharks is the availability of food and it seems the Newcastle, Port Stephens area is a good place to eat things," he said.
Dr Bruce said no one knew where white sharks bred but sharks 1.8 to 2.8 metres long aged between two and five years lurked in the area in numbers between spring and midsummer.
"They do come into the surf zone but also spend a lot of time in an area 10 to 15 kilometres off shore in water 100 to 120 metres deep," Dr Bruce said.
"One thing is this shark is definitely a visitor and they do not live off Nobbys or Newcastle. "
Heliservices Newcastle and Hunter chief pilot Steve Bazic said the Nobbys shark was probably the one he helped monitor off Nobbys when the beach was closed after a shark sighting on March 12.
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