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PODCAST

Crossing the Tideline

In 2023, Brett Burcher had a close encounter with a Great White Shark while surfing at his local beach in Forster, NSW. The entire incident was captured on drone, in clear blue water, from directly above. He was a new father with a three month old daughter at the time.That moment became the catalyst for Crossing the Tideline, a podcast sitting right at the line where certainty gives way to unpredictability, and where most of us, despite the risks, keep choosing to step in.Right now it has never been

education documentary

All Episodes

00:56:28

Ep16 | Bull Sharks 101 | Dr Paul Butcher DPI |...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/10/04

The word “shark” is often used to describe a broad range of species, but that can overlook some significant differences. Great whites, bull sharks and tiger sharks have different biology, behaviours, movements, diets and population dynamics and those differences matter when we’re talking about how they interact with people and the environments they share.These three species have been highlighted because they are the species most commonly associated with serious interactions with humans in areas

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01:33:20

Ep15 | Great White Sharks 101 | Dr Paul Butcher |...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/09/27

The word shark is often used to describe a broad range of species, but that can overlook some significant differences. Great whites, bull sharks and tiger sharks have different biology, behaviours, movements, diets and population dynamics. Those differences matter when we're talking about how they interact with people and the environments they share.This is a three part mini-series taking a closer look at each species individually, recorded with Dr Paul Butcher, Principal Research Scientist with the

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00:35:21

Ep 14 | ProGuarding: Aaron Graham & Paddy James |...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/09/12

Welcome to Crossing the tideline podcast, Brett Burcher here. In this ep you will Meet Aaron Graham, founder of Proguarding, a company that delivers water safety and medical services to a range of industries. Aaron and his team currently run control Trauma first aid courses across Australia. Ive been to a few of these courses and they are shockingly good. They provide first response style training for life threatening trauma wounds and injuries. They make it so realistic and the info, both the

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01:28:41

Ep 13 | Lucas & Matt - Surfing NSW | Government...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/08/31

Lucas Townsend is the CEO of Surfing NSW and has been in the rooms where funding decisions are being made. A Northern Beaches local himself, he understands what communities have been living through and has been pushing for surfer representation at a government level through one of the most active periods of shark activity NSW has seen.Matt Lawson is the man on the ground. He has spent years running shark awareness and education programs up and down the NSW coast and has been in communities in the

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01:28:43

Ep 12 | Anna Breytenbach | Interspecies Communication...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/08/16

Anna Breytenbach is a South African interspecies communicator. That means she communicates with animals, not through behaviour observation or science, but through direct energetic exchange. She has worked with big cats, elephants, wolves and wild predators across the world. She has also communicated with Great White Sharks.Brett came across Anna on the Telepathy Tapes podcast, then a friend sent him a video of her speaking about shark human interactions at the Byron Bay lighthouse, filmed just after

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01:42:14

Ep 11 | Dr Riley Elliot | NZ Shark Tracker | Crossing...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/08/02

Dr Riley Elliott is one of the world's leading shark scientists. Before that he was, and still is, a surfer and diver from New Zealand trying to understand the animals he shared the ocean with.That curiosity has taken him around the world studying Great White Sharks, tracking their movements, producing documentaries and trying to communicate the science to people who actually need it.In this conversation we get into the migration of Great Whites between New Zealand and Australia, what decades of

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01:19:31

Ep 10 | Michael Hoarau | Reunion Island: Bull Sharks,...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/07/19

Between 2011 and 2019, Reunion Island experienced 30 shark attacks, 11 of them fatal. Bull sharks were responsible for 90% of them, on a small French island of 900,000 people in the Indian Ocean, in the most popular tourist and surfing areas on the west coast. For a place that small, it was unfathomable to live through.Michael Hoarau runs operations for the Shark Safety Unit on Reunion Island and has spent years deep in the data, the fieldwork and the politics of trying to reduce shark encounters in

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01:21:47

Ep 9 | Carl Musker | Surfers, Shark Data & the Fight...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/07/06

This episode I'm joined by Carl Musker from Sydney's Northern Beaches, one of the most shark-active stretches of coastline in the world right now.A Long Reef Boardriders member for more than 30 years, Carl is part of an alliance of surfers and community members who are pushing for stronger government action on shark mitigation. Carl is also a close friend of the Psilakis family and was surfing at Long Reef with Mercury on the morning he was fatally attacked. In this conversation, Carl explains why

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01:11:22

Ep 8 | Katie Thompson | Grief, Loss & Life After a...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/06/25

On Father's Day, September 5 2021, Tim Thompson was fatally attacked by a shark while surfing at Shelley Beach, Emerald Beach near Coffs Harbour. He was 31 years old. His partner Katie Thompson was at home, eight months pregnant with their daughter Elka. She found out through a link to an ABC news article her mum sent her.Katie talks about the morning Tim died, an ordinary Sunday they had spent at home talking about how different the following Father's Day would be. How the news reached her. What

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02:18:44

Ep 7 | Dan Webber | What the Science Isn't Telling...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/06/14

Dan Webber is a journalist, surfer and longtime observer of the shark debate in Australia. He was in the water for two shark attacks during the Ballina cluster of 2014 and 2015, a two year period that saw twelve incidents across a 70km stretch of coastline between Evans Head and Byron Bay. Out of that experience he built the Ballina Shark Reports page, a real time community sighting tool that was running one shark report per day at its peak before the local mayor asked him to take it down.In the

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01:39:18

Ep 6 | Senator Surfer | Shark Policy, Deterrents &...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/06/14

Senator Peter Whish-Wilson has spent 14 years in Australian politics fighting for ocean and environmental protection. He's also a surfer and diver who uses deterrence himself, has had his own unannounced Great White encounters off the Tasmanian coast, and made the trip out to the Neptune Islands to observe deterrent testing firsthand. He's stepping away from the Senate mid-2026, and this conversation catches him at a moment of genuine reflection.Pete doesn't sit comfortably on either side of the

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01:12:40

Ep 5 | Easkey Britton | Water, Healing & Our...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/06/01

Easkey Britton is an Irish surfer, marine social scientist, writer and ocean advocate who has spent her life studying the relationship between people and water. Born into a surfing family on the northwest coast of Ireland, she competed internationally from the age of twelve and has spent the decades since trying to understand what the ocean does to us, and for us, and what we owe it in return.This one is different to the others in the series. Sharks barely get a mention. But water is where people

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00:13:01

An Introduction to Crossing the Tideline

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/05/27

In 2023, Brett Burcher had a close encounter with a Great White Shark while surfing at his local beach in Forster, NSW. The entire incident was captured on drone, in clear blue water, from directly above. He was a new father with a three month old daughter at home.That moment became the catalyst for Crossing the Tideline, a podcast sitting right at the line where certainty gives way to unpredictability, and where most of us, despite the risks, keep choosing to step in.Right now it has never been a

en

01:20:06

Ep 4 | Prof. Charlie Huveneers | Shark Deterrents,...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/05/19

Charlie Huveneers is a researcher and lecturer at Flinders University in South Australia, and one of the leading names in shark bite mitigation science in this country. For close to 20 years his team has been doing the fieldwork that most people only read about, testing deterrents on live sharks, studying Great White behaviour and trying to answer the questions that coastal communities are actually asking.This one gets into the practical stuff. We go through what the research actually shows on

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01:29:40

Ep 3 | Brinkley Davies | Shark Conservation and...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/05/18

Brinkley Davies grew up surfing the Yorke Peninsula and the West Coast of South Australia, two coastlines that have had more than their share of shark encounters, fatalities included. She is also a marine biologist, conservationist and diver who has spent years working alongside Great Whites, including three years on the cage diving boats out of Port Lincoln.That combination makes for a rare kind of conversation. Brinkley doesn't sit neatly on either side of the debate, and that's what makes her

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01:34:06

Ep 2 | Dave Rastovich | Fear, Solitude & Reading the...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/05/18

Dave Rastovich has spent more time in the ocean than most people spend indoors. A lifetime of surfing remote coastlines, alone, in all conditions, has given him a way of reading the water that is intuitive and deliberate. He has had to reckon with his own fear, now watching his son find his feet at the same breaks where he found his.This conversation goes to places I didn't expect. We talk about the tension between seeking solitude in the water and the vulnerability that comes with it. How Dave

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01:41:11

Ep 1 | Dr Chris Lowe - Shark Lab CSULB | Shark...

Crossing the Tideline ·

2026/05/17

For over 27 years, Dr Chris Lowe has been studying Great White Sharks on the beaches of California - one of the most densely populated coastlines in the world. As director of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach, his team uses drones, acoustic tagging and underwater cameras to track juvenile white sharks that spend their days metres from swimmers, mostly unnoticed.What they've found might surprise you. Sharks and people are sharing the water far more often than anyone realised, and bites remain

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17 results

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