Vic Hislop says protection and fishing have created disastar

SHARK attacks will increase because of overfishing and government protection of the deadly predators, says a shark hunter.

Queensland shark hunter Vic Hislop says protection and fishing have created a recipe for disaster.

With yesterday's terrifying attacks combining with a surge of inshore shark sightings around Queensland and the recent fatal attack on a Perth snorkeller, Mr Hislop said everything he had been predicting for years was coming true.

He said it was clear sharks were regularly preying on humans as well as large ocean mammals as fish stocks diminished.

And he said there was no doubt the great white that took Brian Guest, 51, at Rockingham Beach, south of Perth, two weeks ago, was the same shark that had taken another snorkeller -- Geoffrey Brazier, 26 -- north of Perth in 2005.

"If people would just listen to me, there would be no one dying from shark attacks," he said.

"Everything I wrote in my book [Sharkman] 12 years ago is coming true 100 per cent of the time."

In 1997 Mr Hislop accused the Federal Government of criminal neglect over Australia's new shark-protection laws, saying the Government had been persuaded by vested interest groups to gloss over the country's real shark fatality statistics to protect the tourist industry.

That was just after then environment minister Robert Hill announced a plan making it illegal to capture or kill great whites or grey nurses in all Australian waters including the nation's huge fishing zone and waters above the continental shelf.

Until 1997, humans were killing up to 500 great whites a year. But Mr Hislop said marine mammals and people were the threatened ones as numbers of the feared predators continued to increase.