Thousands of people protested on Australia’s beaches against a shark cull in Western Australia. They asked the state’s prime minister to stop the cull, and RSPCA Australia and Virgin Atlantic owner Richard Branson criticized it. Catching and killing sharks longer than three metres began after a number of shark attacks on Western Australia’s coast. A 35-year-old surfer, who was killed in November 2013, was the sixth person to die from a shark attack in two years. But the whole of Australia has had, on average, just one shark-related death a year for the last 50 years. Kate Faehrmann, of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said, from a protest in Perth, the state capital of Western Australia: “We’ve always said that this idea won’t work. Drumlines, which they use to catch the sharks, kill sharks if they’re one, two, three metres or more, and also dolphins, turtles and other things. That’s why we don’t want the cull.” Thousands of people protested on beaches in the cities of Perth, Sydney and Adelaide, and at beaches in Victoria and Queensland. Faehrmann said the protests showed that Australians wanted sharks to be protected: “What’s amazing is that so many people in Australia love sharks. This has shown that people are scared but thousands of people are coming out across the country to say, ‘That’s the sharks’ ocean. We respect them, we love