In Australia, where people spend a lot of time at thebeach, the government has realised that it mustprevent sharks from swimming near its beaches.Asa result, they've introduced a beach-nettingprogram.Beach-netting, or meshing, involves settinglarge nets parallel to the shore; this means that thenets on New South Wales beaches are set on oneday, and then lifted and taken out to sea on thenext day.When shark-netting first began in 1939,only the Sydney metropolitan beaches weremeshed - these beaches were chosen becausebeaches near the city are usually the most crowdedwith swimmers.Ten years later, in 1949, systematic meshing was extended to include thebeaches to the south of Sydney.As a result of the general success of the program in Sydney,shark-meshing was introduced to the state of Queensland around 1970.The New Zealandauthorities also looked at it, but considered meshing uneconomical - as did Tahiti in the Pacific