SharkSmart

NSW Department of Industry

About this app

Enjoy NSW beaches. Be SharkSmart

Check the latest sightings by Surf Life Saving drones and tagged shark detections before you hit the water in NSW. A better awareness and understanding of sharks and their behaviour can help everyone enjoy the beach and reduce the chances of a shark encounter.

The SharkSmart app provides information and resources such as Alerts to help you reduce the chance of a close encounter with a shark at NSW beaches and estuaries.

Stay SharkSmart with our app.

Maps
The Maps feature shows where the user is in relation to the general location of beaches with shark mitigation gear, alerts about shark-related incidents and news and real-time information from NSW’s VR4G tagged shark listening stations. Beachgoers can download the app and set it to receive tagged shark alerts at certain times and locations.

Wear OS compatible
If you have a smart watch running Wear OS by Google, the SharkSmart App also comes with a companion smart watch app to receive SharkSmart alerts. These alerts can be viewed by your location with the “around me” feature or set up to receive alerts for a region, by time or favourite beaches. This is a companion app so it is necessary for the watch to be in sync with sharksmart phone app.

Species
This feature presents images of dangerous and non-dangerous sharks and other marine animals that sting and bite for information and education purposes.

Social Media
The app has links to official NSW Department of Primary Industries social media channels including Facebook, NSW SharkSmart Twitter and YouTube. There’s also a link to the Department’s SharkSmart webpage so users can be up to date with the latest information provided by the department.

Information
Details about the NSW Shark Meshing (Bather Protection) Program are provided.

My Risk
It provides a range of interactive features and resources including a fundamental risk assessment profile that allocates a user into a ‘risky’ or ‘safer’ behaviour rating using factors understood to affect shark bite risk. Risk rating escalates higher or lower subject to the input of the user (e.g. swimming at sunrise or dawn would increase the risk). The risk level can be reduced by adjusting risky behaviour but never eliminated (unless the user doesn’t go in the water)

Other Safety Programs
The NSW Government hosts, supports and/or promotes a range of other water safety programs. Links to key programs are provided so user can get the most out of NSW beautiful waterways while staying safer.

Ratings and reviews

The latest update shows incorrect VR4G stations in List mode. click on Forster it shows Hawks Nest, click on Old Bar it shows Forster, click on Port Macquarie it shows Old Bar etc etc

Jan 23: Push notifications still not working. Dec 22: Feedback issue has now been fixed. Push notifications not working and interface needs a revamp. Filtering events on both location and time are not possible Update Nov 22: "Can't save beaches fixed", but App drops this when it updates. Feedback facility within the app does nothing. Alerts in Android don't work ( it looks like the Apple users get too many if you read the reviews!). Map view very buggy.

Unintuitive, difficult. Cannot even add favourite beaches as the app seems to be incapable of doing so. Alerts come in, how I don't know! Frustrating. Needs a lot of work. Well, after contacting the developers and hoping for some improvement, I downloaded and installed it again today 20 Jan 2020. Nothing has improved. Uninstalled it again.

What's new

Please update your app to the latest release as we have fixed some issues faced on a few devices. We also have seen some inconsistency in some Samsung devices relating to the feedback feature in the app; this has been re-tested and released. Please send us any feedback through the app and we will be happy to assist. Added a note so you can see what type of Alert you are viewing on the map. Fixed the issues on the filtering the alerts. Fixed push notifications issues.