Since the Jaws movie series, I have employed 2 immutable rules for self-preservation, when on a beach vacation.
- Do not swim.
- If rule 1 is not followed then ensure you swim with someone who is larger (read chunkier than yourself), acting on the assumption that Mr (or Mrs) Shark would opt for a Big Mac with fries over a Cheeseburger. Yes, I am the Cheeseburger in this analogy.
Good news for me (and my Big Mac, I mean by best friend). Enter surf brand ‘SeaDog’ who has come up with a novel and super practical solution.
It turns out sharks don’t like the smell of other dead sharks. Something that fishermen applying their trade to the Indian Ocean has known for many years.
The Brookers, a father and son team who own and run SeaDog turned to British pharmaceutical company CatSci. The company chemically mined a shark sample and mapped out 60 possible chemical components responsible for the odour of a dead shark. It then narrowed this down to a possible six chemicals. The Brookers then recruited divers to help them test each of the six compounds in Fish Hook Bay, located just outside of Cape Town in South Africa, a spot notorious for sh-sh-sharks.
Compound 2 turned out to be the winner. Sharks dispersed when the solution was released into the water, better yet it had no impact or deterrent effect on the other marine life in the vicinity. Committed to saving sharks and the natural marine ecosystem, The Brookers and SeaDog could finally make my beach holiday shark snack phobia into a thing of the past.
References:
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/shark-attacks-2018-smell-podi
http://seadogsport.com/podi
