Shark Week: Inside Reunion Island’s Shark-Infested Waters And The Potential Of The Sharksafe Barrier

Shark Week 2015 comes to a close on Sunday with the premiere of the special Shark Island (8 p.m. on Discovery). Like this year’s Return of the Great White Serial Killer, which explored the occurrence of attacks every two years at California’s Surf Beach since 2008, Shark Island investigates a deadly mystery: Why are bull sharks drawn to Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, producing 17 attacks in four years — seven of them fatal?

The danger is so high that swimming and surfing on most beaches is now illegal. As you see in the clip above, eight “Shark Watchers” will patrol the waters so that surfers can spend a couple of hours on their boards. That’s how strong the call of the ocean is to those who live there. As tensions mount and graffiti around the island calls for culling — particularly after the April 2015 death of promising surfer 13-year-old Elio Canestri, who was training with others without the Watchers — Dr. Craig O’Connell is trying to find a way for man and shark to coexist before it’s too late. He spoke to Yahoo TV about the situation in Reunion Island, and whether the shark repellent technology he’s developing is necessary in a place like North Carolina, the site of multiple shark bites this summer (presumably from bull sharks as well).

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How long has this been a passion for you?
It’s something that’s been my passion since I was about 10 years old. I watched Shark Week as a kid. People would call during an episode, and I’d tell my mom to tell them I was busy, ‘cause my eyes were glued to the TV. I can remember one particular episode where there was an image of a shark entangled with a net, and that shark soon perished. I remember at that particular time I said to myself, “That’s wrong. Why are people doing this to these animals?” From that very moment on, I wanted to dedicate my life to finding a solution to allow for people and sharks to peacefully coexist. That led to the development of a new technology that we can deploy along the coastline to simply deter sharks, but not kill sharks, so that surfers and swimmers can utilize areas and not have to worry about the threat of these animals swimming around.

That’s the Sharksafe Barrier you helped develop. How long have you been working on that?
The research started about 10 years ago. I did some of the very preliminary work, where I wanted to see if one of the components of the barrier, the magnets, could in fact deter sharks. So I tested it on a wide range of species — bull sharks, tiger sharks, great whites, hammerheads — and it was very, very successful. Then about six years ago, I traveled to South Africa and teamed up with a local university and we came up with the Sharksafe system, and we’ve been testing it for over six years now and it’s been extraordinarily effective.

And it’s magnets linked together to look like dense kelp?
Yes. One of my colleagues down in South Africa, Michael Rutzen, for several decades he’s been going spearfishing in the white shark capitol of the world, Gansbaai, and he’d spear fish, the white shark would come in for the fish, but he would simply bring the fish in to the really dense kelp areas and the sharks wouldn’t follow. So that’s when we kind of merged our ideas together and said, “Why don’t we just develop a very dense, artificial kelp forest, put magnets in it, and there you go. That’s the Sharksafe Barrier.’”

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Is it being used at Reunion Island?
It’s being considered. We spoke to the local government officials, we made them aware of the technology — maybe in the future it’s something that they could implement. We are finishing up our final trials, as we speak, in South Africa, and these are looking at the exclusion capabilities of the barrier on great white sharks, and so far it’s been very, very promising. The sharks aren’t going through the barrier to get to the bait. So it is working.

We’ve engineered it in a way that it can withstand high-energy coastlines, like you see in South Africa. Because it’s cost effective, you can actually utilize it over a pretty large area. The inspiration for the barrier is to use it to replace the detrimental beach nets and drum lines that are used in South Africa and Australia to minimize shark populations. So if we were to use our system, we wouldn’t be killing the sharks like these drum lines and beach nets do, we’d simply be excluding them from a region.

Is the Sharksafe Barrier something that could be used in North Carolina?
It’s something that could be used, but my take on the situation there is it’s very temporary. Right now, the conditions along the North Carolina coast are perfect for these sharks to be inshore. And also, you have a bunch of people who are utilizing water because it’s the start of the summer, so you have an increased probability of an encounter with these sharks. But these conditions aren’t always going to stay exactly the same, so eventually, this is gonna move on. I don’t necessarily think that there’s a continual year-long threat in North Carolina, so I don’t necessarily know if the Sharksafe Barrier is necessary for that region. I just think the best thing that people can do is to look at the conditions and say, “Well, all right, if there’s prey in the area, maybe it’s not the best time to go swimming, or maybe don’t swim at dawn or dusk when these sharks feed more frequently.”

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The conditions in North Carolina that have been cited are warmer water, a lack of rain to dilute the salt water, and people swimming near fishing piers. On Reunion Island, it’s increased development making the water murky with pollution and decreased fish population?
Yeah. I think one major contributor to the situation there is how we’ve modified the environment. You’re gonna start seeing this in other places: If we modify the environment, if we fish out the sharks’ prey, if we continue to develop and pollute the waters, these sharks are gonna move to other locations, and unfortunately, they may have moved to an area where there’s more people utilizing the water. We’re not necessarily sure if those are the two main contributing factors, but they could very well be factors that are causing these attacks.

What’s your take on Reunion Island’s Shark Watchers?
I think the Shark Watchers is a very beautiful system. I was actually disappointed that I never mentioned them during my interviews for the documentary because I met the people, they’re passionate. And for a lot of these people [on Reunion Island], surfing is their life. The fact that they can’t utilize the resource — they’re actually being fined, they come back in and the police write them a ticket. So these shark spotters are an excellent way to minimize the risk of these interactions with sharks. It gives these kids the ability to get back into the water. If they don’t have those Shark Watchers right now, these kids won’t be allowed in the water. Essentially what that means for these kids is that there’s something really deadly lurking underneath the waves, and it makes them fearful of the ocean. So they need to get in there and experience the ocean and understand that it is a beautiful place. There’s a lot of beautiful things there. So it kind of helps reenforce the beauty of the ocean for these kids. It’s a very important system so they can get in the water right now.

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Anything else you’d like to add?
There’s one thing that I would like to say. I think it’s imperative that these governments think in terms of the long term. That they don’t have these short-sided, knee-jerk reactions where they have to go out and kill the sharks that they think are responsible for the attacks. We’ve seen it in Western Australia, they considered it in North Carolina. I think people need to recognize that the second we step into the ocean, we’re stepping into the sharks’ environment. The fact that the governments think they could simply fish these sharks out to make it more convenient for us is deeply saddening and disrespectful. I hope that people do take a step back and think in terms of the long term. It’s these short-term reactions that will have long-term negative consequences on the ocean.

Shark Week continues through July 12. Discovery and its conservation partner Oceana have teamed for the new initiative Change the Tide, which aims to create a coalition of engaged organizations and individuals to help preserve and restore our oceans.