Queensland leads the nation on state-sanctioned shark destruction.

Queensland’s net-based system has picked up almost 4200 sharks in the last six years.

It dwarfs figures from the states do not use drum lines and blanket netting.

From January to March this year, shark-culling contractors caught 172 sharks off Queensland’s coasts.

Queensland Fisheries Minister Leanne Donaldson says the nets and drum lines have been installed off 85 beaches.

Conservationists say that number is far too high, and shark management should be scrapped.

Ms Donaldson says fisheries officers take measures to reduce the risk to whales, turtles and dolphins.

Queensland uses electronic warning devices on nets, baits that are unattractive to dolphins, and keep “specialist patrols” on standby to release animals.

Ms Donaldson said the electronic warnings created a 40 per cent drop in dolphin entanglements, and saw 90 per cent of turtles caught in nets released alive.

A single whale was caught in Queensland shark nets in 2015, and it was freed successfully.

“Since the start of the program in 1962 there has been one shark fatality at a shark control beach in Queensland,” Ms Donaldson told News Corp.

Despite the success of his northern neighbours, NSW Premier Mike Baird is refusing to expand his state’s shark net program.

The nets were installed off metropolitan beaches between September 2015 and April this year.

Mr Baird has taken a technological tack, backing new anti-shark technology through a $16 million shark strategy after a spate of attacks last year.

Reports say three VR4G listening stations that were providing “real time” alerts when tagged sharks swam past were damaged in storms last weekend.

There are also reports that similar storms would put Mr Baird’s planned anti-shark barriers at risk.

Green groups question the motive of indiscriminately catching sharks in response to attacks, arguing that the policy appears to have been inspired largely by the movie ‘Jaws’.

Nets are certainly a blunt instrument, if the goal is to catch specific ‘rogue’ sharks.

During WA’s three-month shark cull trial in 2014, a majority of the 172 sharks hooked were tiger sharks, not the great whites that it was meant to catch.

Premier Colin Barnett recently ruled out resurrecting the drum line policy.