yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Testing a Shark Deterrent | Shark Beach with Chris Hemsworth


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

I think it's fair to say, however good we get at keeping humans and sharks apart in the ocean, there will always be moments when we meet. In those worst-case scenarios when sharks bite, is there anything that can be done?

Charlie Houveneers is a scientist who's thought more about this than most.

“Hey mate, how are you?”

For several years, he's been looking at ways of deterring sharks that decide to attack.

“Is your, uh, research and line of work due to your passion and love for sharks or passion and love for humans? Or who are you more invested in? It's okay to say the sharks too.”

“You do things in my situations, but yeah, it's a combination. It's really, I've always been interested in sharks since I'm a kid. Yeah, and yeah, the fascination for sharks just changing to a real interest in the science and understanding the sharks better so that we can actually help and provide a safer environment for people but also for sharks.”

“Yeah, are you going into the field soon to test any of those deterrents?”

“Yeah, actually, we're going next week.”

“Well, good luck with it.”

Thanks. Charlie and his colleagues from Flinders University in Adelaide are heading into the seas off South Australia. On board, they're testing the latest shark deterrent and protection technologies.

“So what we've seen is that in the recent years, there has been an increase in the number of sharks globally, including in Australia. This has resulted in a lot of interest in the devices to try to reduce those risks.”

The team have sailed to the Neptune Islands, a hot spot for great whites. The sharks come here to prey on Australia’s largest colony of long-nosed fur seals, so it's the perfect place to test products designed to take advantage of sharks' very unusual senses.

“There’s only a small number of animals that have this ability to detect electric fields, and sharks have it through these black dots called ampullae of Lorenzini. The idea behind these electric field-based deterrents is that they will produce such a strong pulse that it will overwhelm the sensory organ and make the shark basically move away from the source."

The aim is to develop a safer surfboard with an electrical shark deterrent built into it.

“This produces an electric field through two electrodes which are positioned just underneath the board, and this is kind of a replica of a surfboard. This produces a field which is transmitted to this electrode and creates a bit of a barrier around the surfboard, which in theory should be deterring the sharks.”

To test the theory, the experiment compares a shark's reactions to a board with the electrical device switched on to a board with it off. But getting robust data means repeating the process many times over.

Over hundreds of previous trials, the team have captured remarkable footage of sharks in action. First, they recorded what happened to a baited board with a device turned off.

“It’s interesting that we do have a bait just underneath that board swimming as we would expect to see it swimming around a bait. And then what happened to the sharks when the device was turned on.” [Music]

“So that was a pretty obvious flinch. He's coming back now. That kind of flinching reaction we didn't see that when the deterrent was turned off, and you can see the really obvious flinching in the gills as well in the jaw gaping. Well, look at that one. So that one came really from down below; it was only within half a meter.”

Overall, there was a 60% reduction in the proportion of weight being taken.

“60% reduction in shark bites. If the eight people killed by sharks in Australia in 2020 had been able to use an electric deterrent like this, then five may still be alive.” [Music]

Products like these are promising, as we may be able to reduce fatalities in the future, all without harming the sharks.

More Articles

View All
Remarks by Kirsty Nathoo
So that wraps up the day of talks. We do have a reception now downstairs; that’s downstairs where you had your lunch, and also outside in the courtyard. Before everybody disappears, I do have some thank yous. Thank you very much to everybody who has been…
Fundraising Advice from Female Founders
Okay, hi everyone! Next part of the session is going to be a fundraising panel where we have three ladies from the Seattle scene who are going to impart some advice on how they’ve approached fundraising and some of the lessons that they’ve learned. My n…
"You Will NEVER Be Able to Afford to Retire" - BlackRock CEO Larry Fink
People working longer should we making a possible facility? Should we frankly increase the age for Social Security? What if I told you there was a $14 trillion crisis brewing in the United States that, until now, virtually no one had been paying attention…
Services You Get As You Get Richer
When an hour of your time starts to cost tens of thousands of dollars, the way you operate changes. These are ten services you get as you get richer to make the most out of your time. Welcome to ALUX. First up, housecleaning services. When your time is w…
Apostrophes and plurals | The Apostrophe | Punctuation | Khan Academy
Hello grammarians! Hello David! Hello Paige! So today we’re going to talk about apostrophes and plurals. We talked about this a little bit in our introduction to the apostrophe video. This is a very, very rare case where we use an apostrophe to show that…
Two Champions, One Family: Hear Their Inspiring Story | Short Film Showcase
[Music] I think the secret of my longevity is that I haven’t really been hit that much. My style of fighting is that of a boxer, which is more movement-based, and I don’t brawl with a person, so I’m not really exchanging these punches and getting hit a lo…