Shark repellents
WHY DON’T WE HAVE RELIABLE SHARK REPELLENTS?
Over the years there have been many attempts to make shark repellents. Anything from sunscreens, wetsuits, electric and magnetic bracelets, all the way to physical barriers on swimming beaches. Most fail because they are fairly crude attempts at affecting a complex animal in a complex environment. At the core of the problem are several immovable facts:
Water is a dense medium, 800 times more dense than air.
The ocean is powerful and tends to dismantle anything mechanical through wave and surge motion. Saltwater quickly eats away at most materials.
Sharks respond vastly different to stimulus like smell, sound or magnetism depending on the species, the location, visibility and the circumstances of the day. Different species are attracted or fearful of different things.
It is very difficult to design a mechanical gadget that can handle the kind of output that would be effective in a dense medium such as water without harming other wildlife, or the person wearing it, in the process. There have been experiments with magnetic installations on the ocean floor and some visual barriers that have shown to be effective, but they tend to be expensive and difficult to maintain and they get beat up by surges and waves. The ocean isn’t easily controlled.
The military has had some luck with chemical repellents, but these would be impractical for the average consumer. And most liquid repellents disperse much too quickly to be effective. Some repellents defy any logic if you have ever met a shark. When humans insist on applying their terrestrial logic to a species that has 7 senses and has been built to hunt in the ocean, it is not likely to have a successful outcome. You can read more on the different repellents and their effectiveness here.
Most devices we have seen or heard of will only work on certain species, during certain circumstances and under specific conditions. Sharks’ response to a color pattern or electric field will differ depending on what other stimulation is in the water at the time. How strong a deterrent has to be largely depends on how motivated the shark is. The slightest sound, movement or sight can either attract or spook a shark, depending on what they are used to, why they are in a particular location and what they may or may not fear. How often do sharks have to fear being hunted by Orcas if they live in a place where they never encounter Orcas? Small amounts of electric current can attract sharks. So does sound. How can you dose it considering the density of the water? Sound travels incredibly far. Electricity disperses quickly. The variables that must align to make something functional and practical seem almost insurmountable.
DO WE REALLY NEED REPELLENTS?
The big question is, why do we feel the need to develop repellents? The reasoning is usually based on:
A certain location is increasingly used for surfing and swimming and people want to feel safe. Rather than picking a different place to enter the water, a “dangerous” location or activity must be made more safe.
People in tourist-based economies get worried about losing their income if people get scared by a shark.
A company sees the potential money that can be made based by a product that could address the irrational fear of sharks. Just imagine if there was a sunscreen or a bracelet that actually saved you from being mugged on land. Would you buy it?
Add to this the usual headlines after shark sightings that create the attitude that the sharks are encroaching on infiltrating “our” playground and that shark attacks must be on the rise and we have created a situation where sharks suddenly have been termed a threat, a pest or an evil entity that needs to be dealt with. If you break it down, it all seems to be based on human paranoia and entitlement, fuelled by the media and a fair amount of concern for immediate profits. Most of this has grown out of our extreme disconnect from the natural world.
For centuries, island and coastal communities had no problem making a living in and on an ocean that was filled with sharks. People knew they needed to be knowledgeable in order to be a functional individual in a wilderness filled with animals. Even today, you will not find many Pacific Islanders that are afraid of sharks or think they are problematic animals. Just the opposite. But the majority of people in modernized societies now look at the beach as their rightful playground. A place of recreation that should be as safe as their backyard pool where their kids should not be threatened by any “intruders.”
But would you let your kids run out into the Savannah where prides of lions may be present and not expect to have an occasional sighting or accident? People enter the ocean, one of the most powerful and unknown environments on our planet, with the least amount of preparedness or awareness, and then are shocked when something happens.
We have managed to wipe out nearly every large predator on land that we deemed as dangerous, and now this attitude is extending into the oceans. We do not need shark or bear repellents. We need to be willing to learn about our environment and enter the wild with some knowledge and acceptance that we are only one of many animals that lives and moves through that space.
ARE THERE MORE SHARK ATTACKS?
The number of people entering the ocean is increasing every year, but the number of world-wide shark incidences has remained pretty much the same for decades. So the logical conclusion is that the incidences are dropping. In some locations sharks may be hunting closer to shore for a multitude of reasons; offshore areas may have been fished out or land development has created trash dumping sites, changed the outflow of rivers, killed whole sections of reefs or changed the composition of animals that now live in the area. That does not mean there are more sharks. I simply means populations have shifted. Another problem is that sharks are being wiped out and that sightings have become quite rare, except in certain locations. Spotting one shark on a beach, a dive site or surf break, where there usually none, has become a newsworthy event. You can read more about the realities of shark attacks here.