Clubs Want Sirens As Shark Warning

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30953, 8 January 1966, Page 1

Clubs Want Sirens As Shark Warning

(From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, January 7. The Auckland Surf Life-saving Association and many Wellington clubs want the National Surf Life-saving Association to declare a 10-second siren blast as the uniform shark warning throughout New Zealand.

The Wellington association is expected at its next meeting in about two weeks to ask the national body for a ruling. The Maranui Surf Lifesaving Club has installed a hand-operated World War II air raid siren in its club house at Lyall Bay. A member of the club said today that there had been no need yet to use it. “We know that if we use

it when there is a real shark danger the circumstances will be such that there will be no fuss. But should we try just to test it for effectiveness it seems there could be trouble.”

The elub has apparently been told the siren could easily be confused with a fire engine’s siren and could lead to confusion among volunteer brigadesmen in the area. Special gongs used as alarms on Australia beaches are considered by life-savers to be the only alternative to a siren.

But many believe that only a siren would be satisfactory. “It is the only alarm people in the surf could hear in the face of some of the gales you get on local beaches,” the Maranui club member said. An official of the harbour section of the Marine Department said the department, as far as he knew, had no plans to initiate a uniform warning system. “No-one has asked us to do so and I would think any action we would take would depend on the attitude of the national life-saving body.”