You might be aware that shark attacks are the centre of many a discussion recently and are a subject of controversy after a number of incidents which occurred around the world recently, especially on Reunion Island with the death of the teenage girl Sarah who was swimming only 5 metres off the coast of Saint Paul Bay on the north-west coast the island.
Now there is much talk of controlling the shark population through the action of culling, giving permission for the mass slaughter of sharks, …but is this the solution? Is killing living creatures that are a part of our eco-system not just another example of the ever growing arrogance and sentiment we are more powerful than nature itself and that everything belongs to us?
The thing that they conveniently didn’t tell you it is that the sharks are used to clean the seabed around the coastal dumping grounds of Reunion’s slaughterhouses who dump vast numbers of carcasses near into the sea of course encouraging the sharks to come closer and closer to the coast to get their food. The other staggering fact often failed to mention in the glossy news reports is the the number of attacks by sharks on humans versus humans on sharks is 12 to over 100 million, the staggering number of sharks killed by humans on a yearly basis. That is 1 every 4 seconds in case your wondering. (source: Huffington Post). Not to mention that the vast majority of these deaths are caused by the utterly inhumane act of ‘Finning’.
This amazing info-graphic makes it a bit clearer. We have zoomed in on the top section so you can read it, but below we have the full image.
We will not continue on this subject because this has been coverer by many different media sources and we wish to move onto our main topic but you may have guessed on which side we place ourself regarding the not so miraculous solution of culling sharks to secure our beaches and allow us to have safe access the ocean at our whim.
Following on from this theme we have become very interested by Hamish Jolly and Craig Andersonen, two researchers at the Shark Attack Mitigation Systems (SAMS), an Australian society in the city of Perth, who have created in association with the Oceans Institute and School of Animal Biology at the University of Western Australia, a completely new wetsuit designed to repel and confuse the sharks thanks to striped patterns inspired by poisonous fish. This incredible wetsuit is a form of “colour coding” informing the shark about the nature of the menu “Do Not Eat”. You may smile, but clearly very clever as the sharks recognise instantly if the fish is venomous due to their stripes and colours.
The brand Radiator will be in charge of the production of those Shark Deterrent Wetsuits and of Surf diverter stickers which will transform your surfboard into a real poisonous fish.
Here is a little video of fake mannequin (luckily) who is wearing a normal wetsuit versus the Radiator Shark Deterrent Wetsuit… the results are astonishing!
