Shark Week

Anyone else watching last night? I think it was the survivorman guy, Les Stroud (I think), doing a show on "what if I was stranded in shark infested waters" kind of thing.  He was experimenting on color preference, taste, heart rates etc.  It wasn't exactly scientific and I'm not sure how much editing was done to the actual footage but these were the results. 

Threw a caged dummy wearing a wetsuit into the water with GWS to see how they react to color.  Dummy wearing black wetsuit (the most common color wetsuit)yielded little to no interest from gws circling beneath.  Dummy wearing red wetsuit, shark showed immediate interest and made a couple non aggressive passes to investigate.  He concluded that red drew the interest cause of it may have interpreted it as blood in the water but did not show signs of agression cause the smell was not present.  3rd color, yum yum yellow....he referrenced the navy studies where the color earned its name....results, shark took an imeediate interest then did a swim by the cage and mouthed the cage.  Yum Yum yellow lives up to its reputation.

He then tossed out meats on a line to see if they got eaten....apparently they're not into ham, they'll mouth a turkey but not eat it and the gws actually ate the big slab of fatty ribs they tossed in.  I'm not quite certain what these tests were to conclude, he mentioned that a big slab of fatty mammal flesh was more likely to get gobbled.

He did a blood taste test, human vs. fish.  The bio guy that was with him said the "they can smell a drop of blood in the water a mile away" fact was a little overblown.  They tossed out a slow drip of fish blood and one of human, result; shark swam around the tuna blood for a bit and ignored the human blood, then it went deep and swam to the surface and attacked the human blood.  Conclusion: blood is blood, no preference.

Heartbeat test was interesting.  He had a device that mimicked a normal heartbeat, a rapid heartbeat and a panicking heartbeat.  Shark picked up on the panicky heartbeat real quick and came in to check it out and showed minimal interest in the normal and semi-fast heartbeats. 

So, if you're in the water with a white shark, keep your heart rate low.
Good to know. 

Yeah...that and be sure to separate yourself from the slab of ribs you were carrying with you. 

I'm starting to like my gray kayak even more these days.  They need to start making kayaks that are dull colored on the bottom for fish/shark stealth and bright on top for visibility of other boats.

Time to spray paint my boat!

Hi Yakers:

     I enjoyed the story on the Dis. Channel, free diving with Doris the Tiger Shark off of South Africa. My Wife received a large screen T.V. as a gift and, I tend not to watch People and Seals being hit by GW.
                                                                                                           Ernie
     
















                                                                                                     

So what do I do about the fatty ribs I carry around 24/7? Randall

So what do I do about the fatty ribs I carry around 24/7? Randall

Yeah but Randal, we worked so hard for those. Besides all these whimps brag about there six packs hell I just got tired of a six pack now I carry the whole keg. Bring it on GWS

interesting that color seemed to matter in this test.

These shows are getting so similar. First, they are way too dramatic. They start with menacing pics of the shark and tell how horrid and ferocious sharks are. How they can rip through an anvil, smell blood from 1000 miles away, and are responsible for X amount of deaths. They go so far as to say, you are not safe in the ocean... Then they go on to tell us about how they actually know sh*t about them for real. Then they play some pleasant music and paint them in this beautiful light. The shark swims off into the sunset and leave us with "although we don't understand them let's respect them." Spare the theatrics... and an original storyline would be nice.

Z (Soon to be Shark week boycotter)

I saw basically the same set of experiments on 'myth busters', with carribean reef sharks instead of GWS though.

For a while I kept some smoothound sharks in an aquarium with some rock crabs that got a reprieve from the pot.  I tossed in some shore crabs (the little guys) and one of the rock crabs caught and crushed one.  Both sharks immediately charged in when they heard the crunching of the carapace - before they could have smelled anything.  I bet rockfish have a similar reaction to the sound of crab shells crunching.