Almost 6500 people have indicated they are attending an anti shark culling rally at Cottesloe Beach on Saturday, just a day before tenders close for setting baited drum lines off the WA coast.
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Protesters and conservationists plan to rally on and off shore near the Indiana Teahouse at 10am on January 4 against a $1 million state government plan to set 72 drum lines off eight beaches along the Perth and South West coasts.
Any great white, tiger or bull shark more than 3 metres in length caught by the lines will be shot and thrown out to sea.
Event organiser Natalie Banks said protesters were encouraged to dress in blue and white on the day. Event speakers include Greens senator Rachel Siewert, opposition fisheries spokesman Dave Kelley and Sea Shepherd director Jeff Hansen.
Great white sharks are listed as a vulnerable and migratory species under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and as such they are protected under the Act as a matter of national environmental significance.
Ms Banks said there was no scientific research to back up the cull, which she called a "knee jerk" reaction to the general public's fear of shark attacks.
"While the organisers of the rally acknowledge that the loss of human lives due to a shark attack is tragic, there is still much more research required to understand whether there is an increase in shark presence and if so, what the contributing factors are."
"More needs to be done to develop sustainable shark attack mitigation strategies, including tagging and tracking, helicopter patrols, bubble curtains, underwater sounds and sharks' visual perception," Ms Banks said.
Premier Colin Barnett said the government worked with Surf Life Saving WA to identify widely-used beaches where there had been a "significant" number of shark sightings.
The move was in response to the deaths of seven people by suspected great white shark attacks since August 2010.
Meanwhile, the drum lines have been highly criticised by Greens members and some members of the fishing community who fear killing apex predators such as great whites will impact fish numbers and harmless marine life will be unnecessarily killed.
More than 65,000 people liked a "No great white cull in WA" Facebook page and on December 23, 100 scientists signed an open letter to the Barnett Government calling for non-lethal measures to be used to protect beachgoers, along with a greater investment in research and monitoring.
WA Greens MLC Lynn MacLaren said commercial shark fishers had not been consulted on the drum line plan.
"They are appalled because it will indiscriminately kill so many small sharks, including those species on whom their livelihood depends," Ms MacLaren said.
"In every other place that they have been used, drum lines have killed many more harmless, small-sized sharks and other marine animals than they have great white sharks."
"WA commercial shark fishers are especially concerned that the WA government's new policy will see the destruction of key breed stock of key species from their fishery, which is only now recovering, through careful management, from past overfishing."
In South Africa, where the same drum lines are used, less than 18 per cent of marine life caught in the 2011 to 2012 financial year were great white or tiger sharks.
Meanwhile, in Queensland, where drum lines and shark nets are used, more than half of the captures are of sharks less than two metres in length and only one per cent of the catch is of great white sharks.
"In South Africa, the number of tiger and great white sharks caught on drum lines has been outnumbered by five times by the capture of smaller sharks, catfish, humpback whales and leatherback and green turtles on those lines," Ms MacLaren said.
