A spate of shark attacks in Australia has left those riding the waves at some of world’s top surfing beaches reaching for technology to try to keep the Great Whites at bay.
Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere typically draws tens of thousands of surfers and other beach lovers to the warm Pacific waters of eastern Australia’s New South Wales state.
But there have been 12 shark attacks in the state this year, compared with only three in both 2014 and 2013, according to the Australian Shark Attack database.
Surfer Arlen Macpherson paid A$390 ($281 USD) for a SurfSafe device and had it embedded in his surfboard to repel sharks by emitting an electronic force field that overpowers their sensing organs, called electro-receptors, or ampullae of Lorenzini. The force field is produced from two electrodes located on the bottom of the board about one meter apart.
“I just got it with all the current attacks and everything happening. I’ve always been a little but worried about sharks and it’s just to help with the peace of mind. If you’re ever surfing by yourself and anything that helps with your peace of mind is worth it, I reckon,” said Macpherson.
SurfSafe recharges in about two hours and has a battery life of 12 hours that starts working the moment the electrodes touch the water, its makers said in a statement.
“I looked at couple of the other ones and the other ones all, there was one, other major one and it hangs off the back of your board. I just heard that you get a bit of drag and it’s not as good and this one only weighs 150 grams, goes in the board, I can’t even tell at all, it just feels the same,” added Macpherson.
In waters along hundreds of kilometers of coast north of Sydney, helicopter patrols regularly spot Great White sharks lurking near the few surfers still brave enough to catch the waves.
Former boxer Craig Ison of Evans Head was knocked from his board and mauled by a Great White on July 31. After coming out of a coma, he vowed never to go in the water again.
A few weeks earlier, body boarder Matthew Lee was attacked at Lighthouse Beach on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, suffering serious injuries to his lower legs.
The worst attack came in February, when a Great White tore the legs off 41-year-old surfer Tadashi Nakahara in a fatal attack at neighbouring Ballina.
Rob Harcourt, Professor of Marine Ecology at Macquarie University in Sydney, says that while devices like SurfSafe and other electronic repellent devices on the market can’t guarantee that they will keep sharks at a distance, tests have shown that they can reduce your chances of being bitten by a shark.
“They’re not designed to keep sharks out of the area, they’re designed to stop them form actually biting you when they come in. So, they have been tested in the field with wild sharks, and several different species in New South Wales and Lord Howe Island and in South Africa and in South Australia and they have shown that they don’t attract sharks to the area, which is a good thing and they do reduce your chances of being bitten, or at least they reduce your chances of bait being bitten but by the same token they don’t stop it from happening, So they are not 100 percent fail-safe, they just give you a lower probably of being bitten,” he said.
Most surfers said they would feel safer using the device. “Yeah, definitely consider it if it was effective. I wouldn’t want to be the test pilot, though,” said lawyer, Bart Adams.
“Anything that could get the sharks away from me for sure, and away from my board and my fellow surfers, yes for sure,” said French tourist, Amaury.
Professor Harcourt said that although there has been an increase in shark attacks in New South Wales, over the course of time, Australia has seen a change in how people use the ocean, with more people surfing, swimming, scuba diving and doing other water-based activities.