New shark repellant device

[AptaMer]

A company in Saint-Malo, Tecknisolar, has invented a new kind of shark repeller that uses ultraviolet as well as sound & electromegnetic waves to repel sharks. The device can be compact because rather than running continuously, it's only activated by the diver when sharks approach too closely, and that way it doesn't keep all the sharks away if you don't want to disturb the sea life.

http://www.tecknisolar.com/2/136/mar...867803b3aecbe8

Apologies that the information is in French, there doesn't seem to be an English language version, but they explain the device

[Echidna]

Spectacular!
Now that's a device that works.

It seems to be really uncomfortable for the poor shark though, hopefully it isn't painful.

[Seatan]

Am I the only one who would LOVE to find myself diving with a shark, especially so called "man eaters" lol? I always wonder why people are so afraid of sharks when you're way more likely to get, like, stung by a sting ray or poisoned by a lion fish. If I was a surfer I might worry some, but I think it's the rare occasion you need to fend off sharks while diving or snorkeling. As in I know a lot of divers and have yet to meet one attacked by a shark. Lots of accidents by other marine life, but no shark attacks. I wuv sharks and would LOVE to dive with any of them! I guess maybe this is useful if you are purposely drawing sharks to you to dive with them using meat or spear fishing in snarky waters? I dunno... The human fear of sharks alludes me. Jaws has totally ruined sharks for this generation the way Moby Dick ruined whales long ago.

[PaolaMF]

is true ? :O shark are my nightmare !!

[Seatan]

is true ? :O shark are my nightmare !!

*pulls out Shark Hat and climbs on soapbox*

The fear of sharks is hugely inflated. Sharks are not particularly dangerous at all, ESPECIALLY to people just swimming or diving. Spear fishers (who kills fish and swim in the blood) and surfers (who ride on boards that look like seals in a shark's natural hunting ground during the hours sharks like to hunt the most) are really the only people at more than a minuscule risk. Sharks, like wolves, are not interested in people in general. Get too close and scare them, they might attack you. More likely the will swim away. But they will not hunt you or stalk you and they have no interest in eating you--even the ones who have gotten "bad names" like the black tip, the hammerhead, and the great white. You are not their prey. You are SO much more likely to be badly injured by other marine creatures than sharks that it is not even funny. Sharks are gorgeous, majestic creatures. They may be top of the ocean food chain but humans are higher. Unlike whales, which have a strong defensive base, sharks are being quickly killed off by mankind mostly thanks to movies such as Jaws and Open Water that paint them as some kind of monster, meaning that people have little interest in protecting them from shark finning. In Open Water some SCUBA divers are left behind in the boat and eventually killed on the surface in deep water by sharks. At the end it says "based on a true story." The key word being "based." They think what actually happened is that the divers became dehydrated by the Australian sun and became delirious, removed their SCUBA gear and drowned. No one thinks it was shark attack, because sharks don't hunt human beings floating on the surface of deep water. Period. End of story. But media has people believing that because it makes a better story. Yet it is not what sharks do or what they are. You can dive safely with great whites--they are not interested in attacking a creature as big as they are that they don't even recognize. Sharks do not stalk humans like Jaws would have you think, nor do they have evil motivations--they are simply creatures who hunt and who are perfectly developed for it. They don't waste time or energy going after food that they don't recognize. My dive buddy two weeks ago found herself a foot above a sting ray on a night dive with waves so huge that if she had been sting that we probably wouldn't have been able to get her onto the boat and to help in any decent amount if time. Yet people are thrilled to see sting rays. The idea that sharks are out to get you is a media lie, one that hurts sharks and damages people's psyches. Don't fall for it! Watch documentaries, read about them, dive with them--you are way more likely to be injured by Decompression Illness than sharks that it's not even funny, yet the bends doesn't haunt people on their dreams. See sharks for what they are: gorgeous. I have met surfers who have had limbs removed by sharks and the one thing they have in common is that they don't blame the shark--surfers know they take a chance when they choose to enter a shark's normal hunting ground doing an activity that confuses the sharks natural instincts--but notice they live to tell the tales. Why? Because once sharks realize their mistake they run away. Human flesh isn't yummy to them. You aren't their food and you are safe from them 99.9% of the time. It's just a bad rep.

Don't waste your money on a device like this--you will probably dive thirty years and never need it once. It is considered a blessing just to glimpse a shark on a dive. It's one thing to make surf gear that keeps sharks from thinking you are a seal so you can surf in their hunting grounds--it's another entirely to make a device to ward off sharks when you are diving and snorkeling. Maybe a marine biologist who regularly dives with sharks could use this, but otherwise this company is just preying on people's fear.

[Ashe]

Seavanna has everything right. The creator of Jaws even said in multiple interviews that he never wanted to do this to sharks, and he feels guilty about the way they are treated and feared. He said he wanted to capture the beauty of sharks, and hadn't realized how much of a monster he turned them into. You have a way higher rate of getting killed doing almost anything else than getting killed by a shark. Driving, vending machines, cows. It's silly. I would love to swim with sharks someday.

[Yulia]

Has a shark ever eaten a human whole?
And is the majority of deadly accidents the persons fault or the sharks?

[Echidna]

Has a shark ever eaten a human whole?

Yes.
One example was the unfortunate fellow who was swimming in breast-deep water on a south african beach.
Witnesses say a shark appeared and swallowed him up in the course of a second.
The only thing that remained were his swimming goggles, and a blood cloud in the water.

As to fault- there is no such thing.
When you set foot in water where hungry sharks roam that are bigger than a human, you can get attacked, no matter what you do.
Most of the time, that will not happen anyway, but there is no certainty.

I'm not a fan of all those "if you do the right thing, you will not get attacked ever!"-allegations.
Yes, you can minimize your risk a bit if you do not fish, spearfish, or surf.
But there is always a risk, and someone who thinks they're above it because they know how to behave "correctly", are deceiving themselves.

And of course it is not the shark's fault. Fault? lolwat.
The shark does what it's supposed to do.
The ocean is his home, it's not the turf of mutated apes.

[Mer-Crazy]

It may just be an Aussie thing, it may just be a me thing because I'm an Aussie but I love sharks. Stingrays scare the crap out of me. We used to live on a canal and every time I saw a stingray I would freak out. I've swam with sharks a few times and, won't lie, it got my heart pumping a bit, but I wasn't terrified like I was of the stingrays.

I think that's one of the best thing a that has come out of mermaiding for me, personally, is that I'm no longer in fear of sharks. I am aware that I need to show them the proper respect they deserve when in the water, and am always cautious but never fearful of my life. And I'm very glad for that. It's helped me overcome my fear of deeper waters and it's due to all the wonderful people on here helping me to realise that sharks are the heartless killers media wants us to believe ^_^

[Seatan]

Yes.
One example was the unfortunate fellow who was swimming in breast-deep water on a south african beach.
Witnesses say a shark appeared and swallowed him up in the course of a second.
The only thing that remained were his swimming
I'm not a fan of all those "if you do the right thing, you will not get attacked ever!"-allegations.
Yes, you can minimize your risk a bit if you do not fish, spearfish, or surf.
But there is always a risk, and someone who thinks they're above it because they know how to behave "correctly", are deceiving themselves.

And of course it is not the shark's fault. Fault? lolwat.
The shark does what it's supposed to do.
The ocean is his home, it's not the turf of mutated apes.

It has nothing to do with being "above" anything it is the statistical likelihood of something happening. No one said that if you do the right thing you won't EVER get attacked. People also get killed by bears in the woods, but are people afraid to enter the woods because of bears? No, because the chance you will get attacked is almost nill most places and places where bear attacks are "common" it is STILL unlikely you will get killed by a bear if you are careful. If you study bears then you might need to go to the woods with protection, or if you are entering territory you know they will try to defend, but 99.9% of the time when someone walks into the woods they are safe from bears. Where I live it is 100% of the time unless a bear has somehow escaped the zoo, just like in many parts of the ocean you are 100% safe from being attacked by sharks. It had nothing to do with being "above" being attacked by sharks and everything to do with realizing there are simply situations where shark attacks are the least likely thing to happen to you. And as for people being "eaten whole" or whatever, even if a shark "swallowed up" everything but the goggles (though how every bit except those lucky goggles got eaten up is beyond me), the question is: did that shark ever try to eat a human again? Probably not because we are not tasty to sharks--we don't provide all the nutrients they need. Sharks aren't man eaters by nature and food and fear are the only reasons they kill (except for curiosity--sharks "touch" things with their mouths which is why you sometimes see them bite rocks, so the only situation in which they might bite a diver is pretty much for curiosity-but if you just swim slowly away as they approach they pretty much lose interest). So it has nothing to do with being above anything. I am probably not going to be eaten by wolves if I go into the woods. I am probably not going to be eaten by a shark if I go in the ocean outside of the shallow waters where they feed. Sharks do their natural thang, and that natural thang doesn't include hunting strange creatures breathing weird bubbles a mile out at sea sixty feet under the water. That's just not where they hunt.

[Seatan]

I just feel that most talk of shark attacks is fear mongering, like telling kids not to go in the woods because the wolves might get them. Possible, but super unlikely--but people don't REALIZE how unlikely it is and so the fear mongering continues until sharks (like wolves until recently) are hated and feared and hunted down when they aren't a real threat at all. Not compared to shit like car crashes or muggings or tripping down the stairs and breaking your neck.

[Sabrina the Selkie]

Seavanna, Kalani, totally agree.
Echidna - highly unlikely. It happens, but as the others said those chances are close to nill. Sharks just don't find humans tasty. Paola, if that's a phobia you have no control over, I'm sorry you suffer from that sort of crippling fear of anything. If it isn't a phobia and just caution generated by what you've heard and seen in the media, I had a (horrible, awful, mean spirited) English teacher who once had a shark literally brush against her leg while she was wading. It didn't bite her. Of course, she completely misunderstood and she has since nursed a crippling shark phobia.

[Echidna]

OT:
if you can't be bothered to hit the ENTER key now and then, please don't expect me to reply, because immense text walls hurt my eyes (so I don't read them).

/OT

[Sabrina the Selkie]

Sorry, that was a mistake.
I was typing quickly.

[Sabrina the Selkie]

I was also annoyed because I was watching a special on alligator skin handbags.
My "defend the demonized animal* instinct was on high.

[Seatan]

OT:
if you can't be bothered to hit the ENTER key now and then, please don't expect me to reply, because immense text walls hurt my eyes (so I don't read them).

/OT

Um, not quite sure if this was meant for me.

But if it was, okay so sorry.

Though that was a bit of a rude way of stating that.

Read or don't read.

I don't "expect" you to reply.

Because I'm not trying to convince you of anything.

I am stating the truth about sharks.

So if someone who has an unreasonable fear of them reads this then they might learn something to help them appreciate their goods.

And then they might have the joy of loving sharks instead of fearing them.

Also I usually post on my phone.

So it can be hard for me to tell how long something is anyway since I can only see the sentence on my tiny screen.

Now we are definitely double spaced, yipee!

And this post was kind of rude of me so now I feel like an asshole. Sigh. So going to bed now.

[Sabrina the Selkie]

Topic near and dear to all of our mermaidy hearts. And Tapatalk can be annoying.

Let's just consider that the device can be useful, especially for spear fishers, surfers, and people with crippling phobias.

Let's also note that sharks are not usually dangerous, and of those rare encounters, even fewer are fatal.

Our passion is a good thing, but we ALL (myself included) need to chill.

And Seavanna, to a certain degree, turnabout is fair play, so don't feel too bad. We're all being rude.

But also, there are unreasonable fears, and then there are phobias. Even the best logic can't cure a phobia.

Like I was saying about the English teacher. I would KILL to have that sort of experience with a shark, but it isn't her fault that the experience scared her out of her wits. It caused in her a persistant life long phobia. She can't even look at photographs of them.

And keep in mind, this happened to her at least a decade before Jaws came out.

[Lotus the Mermaid]

I'd say I'm totally selachophobic. It's real bad. Sometimes, I'm even afraid to swim alone in pools, not because I think there'll be a shark in there, obviously, but I keep getting the image of a shark in my head and it freaks me out. (I know, it's strange). But at the same time, I'm fascinated by sharks. I love them and I think they're amazing and beautiful creatures. I would absolutely LOVE to swim with them, but only if I had some protective gear or something like this to repel them as Sabrina said! The way I see it, they're like the lions of the sea. They're curious, dangerous, and beautiful. It's their turf and we have to treat them with respect. They're not evil, but it's okay to fear them. It's normal. Just as it's normal to be afraid of a lion you come across in the wild. You can admire it and recognize its beauty and majesty, but it's better to do so from a distance and respect that it's their turf you're on. That's my opinion, anyway! <3

[Ginger]

I agree, Lotus Blooming, phobia would be a totally justifiable reason to own and carry one of these. I understand concerns that these might encourage unnecessary fear of sharks, but for people with a shark phobia they could be a tremendous blessing. The best education and most logical reasoning in the world can't take away a phobia. BUT a small, portable device such as this, might be a huge help for those who are trying to overcome their shark phobia. Obviously the manufacturer is going to try to convince the public that they all need to buy one, but, as stated, it is very unlikely that anyone will ever have to actually use the device. I'm not the type to believe humans are superior to all other life forms on the planet, but in my opinion, the device seems like a very reasonable option. It won't harm anything until it is turned on and even if it IS turned on and utilized, it doesn't seem it will permanently damage any sea creatures. Temporary discomfort of a shark in exchange for another person who is willing to go into the ocean and educate themselves on how great - and worth saving, etc. - the ocean and her inhabitants are seems like a fair trade off to me.

[Lotus the Mermaid]

Exactly, Ginger! It will definitely be an investment for me, and I'll encourage anyone who has selachophobia but loves the ocean to pick one up!! I'm really excited, because I feel that this will really help me, personally, to be confident mermaiding in the ocean! (Once I've also gotten my scuba training and a group of people to join, obviously! All the safety precautions required)!! Thank you for sharing this, AptaMer! It's such a blessing!