For many, equipping your surfboard with bright lights seems like an open invitation to sharks, but research published Tuesday by Australian scientists showed it could instead prevent attacks.
The great white shark often attacks its prey from below, sometimes confusing the silhouette of a surfer with that of a seal, explains biologist Laura Ryan of Australia’s Macquarie University.
The researcher and her colleagues were able to demonstrate that boards covered with bright horizontal lights were less likely to be attacked by great white sharks.
According to them, the lights distort the silhouette of the board on the surface of the ocean, making it less appetizing.
“The fear of white sharks has been around for a long time and part of the reason is that we don’t understand them very well,” says Ryan.
The study, published in the journal Current Biology, was carried out in the waters of Mossel Bay, South Africa, an area popular with great white sharks.
The scientists used seal-shaped decoys configured with different LED lights, and towed behind a boat to see which object attracted the most attention.
The brightest lights deterred sharks the most, the study found, while vertical lights were less effective than horizontal ones.
The results are more promising than expected, according to Laura Ryan, who now plans to build prototypes that can be used under kayaks or surfboards.
Australia has advanced devices to monitor sharks, including drones, anti-shark nets and a tagging system that alerts authorities when a shark is near a busy beach.
The results of the study could allow the use of less invasive methods.
But further research would reveal whether other types of sharks such as bull sharks and tiger sharks – which behave differently – react in the same way to lights, the study authors say.
Since 1791, more than 1,200 shark attacks have occurred in Australia, 255 of which resulted in death, according to a Taronga Conservation Society database that lists all known incidents since the late 18th century. The great white shark is responsible for 94 of these deaths.
