Sharpes Beach, Shelly Beach, Lighthouse Beach, and Lennox Head’s Main Beach now have daily frequent drone shark patrols with school holiday staring this week.

The NSW Government expanded its shark-spotting drone program to regular, year-round surveillance as part of new measures to protect swimmers and surfers.

On June 13 a young mother was critically injured at Sydney’s Coogee Beach by a 3.5 metre shark. She was swimming less than 30 metres offshore and between the flags.

The state government is spending an extra $34 million on drones to patrol 17 regional beaches from Forster-Tuncurry to Kingscliff year-round. Surf Life Saving NSW is prioritising beaches with high numbers of swimmers and surfers, where shark incidents have occurred.

Ballina experienced a surge in shark encounters around 2015 and 2016. The most recent was at Angels Beach on January 29, 2026, when a surfer was knocked off a board by a shark but was not injured.

The drones are scheduled to patrol Ballina’s beaches throughout the day.

Surf Life Saving NSW CEO Steve Pearce said 70 beaches on the NSW coast would be patrolled by drones, meaning this is the largest aerial shark surveillance program in the world.

“This is an incredible investment in community, safety, confidence, and ensuring NSW has cutting-edge technology and capacity to provide world-class safety to NSW coastal users,” Mr Pearce said.

“The SLS NSW Shark UAV surveillance program has proven to be an extremely effective component of the NSW Shark Management Program, having this year alone identified and prevented over 2000 sharks interacting with swimmers and surfers, and conducting over 100,000 flights.

“Even with the greatest technology and expanded presence of drones, we cannot prevent all shark interactions, however this funding will allow the development of a safety program that will give the greatest opportunity to prevent these from occurring.”

This  new surveillance is in addition to the existing school holiday drone program along the coast.

The program is also looking to harness emerging technologies to enhance drone monitoring, including AI.

New South Wales spends $120 million on shark management.

President of Surfing NSW, Lusus Townsend, said  Surfing NSW supports the additional funding for expanded drone surveillance, which will play a critical role in keeping surfers safe.

“This is a win for surfer safety all along our coast, with increasing coverage across more beaches, for more hours, and more days of the year,” Mr Townsend said.

“We welcome the NSW Government’s commitment to aerial shark surveillance, which is helping to make surfing as safe as it can be for our thousands of surfers along the NSW coast.”

In Ballina, the patrols are designed to detect sharks and send real-time data back to the SharkSmart App.

Surf Life Saving is also using “Drone-in-a-box” drones that can launch, fly, patrol, and land without an on-site pilot. Automated stations, like the HubX and HubT units, house the drones on the beach.