Protecting your surfboard in vivid lights feels like an open invitation to nice white sharks, however analysis launched Tuesday by Australian scientists discovered it’d really stave off assaults.
Biologist Laura Ryan mentioned the predator typically attacked its prey from beneath, sometimes mistaking a surfer’s silhouette for the define of a seal.
Ryan and her fellow researchers confirmed that seal-shaped boards decked with vivid horizontal lights had been much less more likely to be attacked by nice white sharks.
This gave the impression to be as a result of the lights distorted the silhouette on the ocean’s floor, making it seem much less appetizing.
“There’s this longstanding worry of white sharks and a part of that worry is that we do not perceive them that nicely,” mentioned Ryan, from Australia’s Macquarie College.
The examine, printed within the journal Present Biology, was performed within the waters of South Africa’s Mossel Bay, a preferred nice white feeding floor.
Seal-shaped decoys had been strung with totally different configurations of LED lights and towed behind a ship to see which attracted probably the most consideration.
Brighter lights had been higher at deterring sharks, the analysis discovered, whereas vertical lights had been much less efficient than horizontal.
Macquarie College Professor Nathan Hart, one of many examine’s authors, mentioned the lights induced a “advanced interplay” with the shark’s habits.
“It is like an invisibility cloak however with the exception that we’re splitting the article, the visible silhouette, into smaller bits,” Hart mentioned.
The examine’s authors launched a video exhibiting a few of the analysis in motion.
Ryan mentioned the outcomes had been higher than anticipated and is now within the means of constructing prototypes to be used on the underside of kayaks and surfboards.
Australia has a few of the world’s most complete shark administration measures, together with monitoring drones, shark nets and a tagging system that alerts authorities when a shark is close to a crowded seashore.
Ryan mentioned her analysis might permit much less invasive mitigation strategies for use.
Extra analysis was wanted to see if bull and tiger sharks — which have totally different predatory habits — responded to the lights in an identical means, the authors mentioned.
Ryan et al. / Present Biology
There have been greater than 1,200 shark incidents in Australia since 1791, of which 255 resulted in dying, official knowledge exhibits.
Nice white sharks had been liable for 94 of these deaths.
The general variety of lethal shark assaults worldwide in 2023 remained comparatively low, but it surely was nonetheless twice the earlier 12 months’s complete, in accordance with the newest iteration of the Worldwide Shark Assault File — a database of worldwide shark assaults run by the College of Florida.
The report famous {that a} “disproportionate” quantity of individuals died from shark bites in Australia final 12 months in contrast with different international locations world wide.