Is The Mirage Drive a Shark Attractor ?

Anything in the water that mimics a sea lion will attract a gws

one way to find out....

http://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=39996.0;topicseen

Personally, I think the GWS are pretty selective in what they go after and the few attacks that have happened are a rarity.  It just gets blown out of proportion due to our fears of what we do not understand.  Just compare the odds of getting killed while driving to the spot where you are going to go kayak fishing versus the odds that a GWS is going to attack you.

I think that logic is faulty.  You compare the car accident rate and the GWS attack rate to the same overall population.  Fact is, there are millions of people that drive a car every day, and only a few hundreds/thousands that out on kayaks for the same given period.  According to NTSB there are over 30,000 traffic fatalities every year with a total population of over 300,000,000 (not including non-citizens residing in) the US.  Most American drive every day.  Comparatively, there are nowhere near as many surfers and kayakers, so the total overall number is much lower, further, most of this target population does not kayak or surf every day.  I bet if you accounted for the actual target population, and adjusted for exposure time, the risk is much higher than you think.  Fortunately, they don't seem to care for the taste of plastic, and let go after scaring the bejesus out of kayakers.  Surfers sometimes taste good and don't fair as well in their encounters.  Which I suppose means they fare better than us, according to the sharks.     

The logic isn't faulty... the relative risk in ones lifetime of a shark attack v. a car wreck actually is lower-- if you look at the general population:
shark attack 1 in 3,748,067
car accident 1 in 84

even if you correct for the increased incidence of "kayakers" in the water over the general population, the risk of car accident is still vastly lower.

Sources: All accidental death information from National Safety Council. Disease death information from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Shark fatality data provided by the International Shark Attack File.

Lifetime risk is calculated by dividing 2003 population (290,850,005) by the number of deaths, divided by 77.6, the life expectancy of a person born in 2003

The risk isn't over the period of one's lifetime, it's over the period that you're actually on the water, and can actually be attacked.

You're more likely to get into a car wreck, because your in a car more often.

Those numbers you pulled from NSC account for EVERYONE in the water.  I'm saying due to the nature of our sport, we're a lot more likely to be attacked than the typical thigh-deep wading beach visitor.

How many people on NCKA alone have been attacked by sharks compared to the number of registered users?  I bet that number is a bit scarier.  Obviously, with a sample population so low, it's hard to adjust for error.

Solid point Lee!

didn't I read this thread last year?
 

This has been discussed before but if you include the Cambria incident then there have been 4 shark attacks, 2 hobie and 2 non-hobie. Since about 50% of kayak anglers are in hobies, I think it is not about the mirage drive. The shark is looking up at the kayak and probably only sees the silouette of the kayak not the mirage fins. If I am in a sharky area, the Hobie AI with a shark shield would be my yak of choice.

You misunderstand "risk over a lifetime",
Risk over a lifetime is the risk of having an incident occur over a typical person's lifetime-- so the factors of how often someone drives, etc are all factored in.

Now, for a given person there average driving hours over a lifetime is similar to any other given person. As you mentioned the "kayak fisherman" is not your average person-- their hours on the water are greatly higher than the "typical joe". 

However, given the difference between the relative risks for an average person- it seems that even a kayaker would still be at greater risk of having a car accident than a shark attack.
1 in 84 v 1 in 3.7 million

Even if Bob Kayaker spent 44,000 times more hours on the water than the typical joe, Bob Kayaker would still be at greater risk of getting killed in his car on the way to or from the launch.

YES! To the original question.
Its a proven fact that all mirage drive Hobie's attract not only sharks but, all manner of dangerous sea creatures. The newer the boat= the higher the risk.
I can offer to recycle that hunk of deadly plasticl and make sure it will never give you cause to worry.
 

The original post i referred to was shark attack vs dying in a car on the way to fishing.

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They say you have better chances of getting hit by lightning too. However if your standing on the roof with a ground rod in  the middle of a lightning storm......well you know 

Knock on wood, but the chances of me seriously getting injured in an accident on the way to a launch is small in comparison to the chances of seeing one. Just a personal opinion without hard numbers. 

Coastsider just reported a "feeding event" 4 miles out of Moss.

Interesting Article in regards to Shark Attacks in New Zealand:

http://www.fishing.net.nz/index.cfm/pageid/56/view/yes/editorialID/983

 

Interesting Article in regards to Shark Attacks in New Zealand:

http://www.fishing.net.nz/index.cfm/pageid/56/view/yes/editorialID/983

 

That's an excellent article. I find this part particularly interesting: "However, this is not to say that we should disregard the implications of tourist cage diving with great white sharks, as practiced in the Chathams, and some DoC research methods employed on them here. Both operations use copious quantities of berley and large decoys to attract sharks close up. In my book this creates a dangerous association with food and people. If goldfish can be trained to respond to a finger tap on the aquarium prior to food being dropped into the water, then who is to say great white sharks can’t be conditioned in a similar way? When we then consider their capacity to memorise what they have learnt, we should not be surprised if they start taking an unhealthy interest in boats, and the smaller kayaks in particular."

When I read this, I thought about the recently-released study of the Shark Shield:

http://www.waundersea.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Huveneers-et-al-2012-Shark-Shield-testing_SafeWork-SA-1.pdf

In this study, the Shark Shield seemed to work well in certain cases, and not all in others. For the "not at all" cases, the results of this study differ significantly from a previous study. The authors' state that "Future studies should focus on testing ... in locations not frequented by cage-diving operators". They are implying that one possible explanation for the poor results is that sharks were conditioned (via tourist activities) to a similar type of feeding as used in the study and, because of this conditioning, the Shark Shield became useless in similar situations.