Researchers: Surfboards with Bright Lights Could Deter Shark Attacks

This picture taken on October 16, 2024, shows surfers riding the waves on Maroubra Beach after authorities closed down two adjacent beaches in Sydney. (Photo by Saeed KHAN / AFP)
This picture taken on October 16, 2024, shows surfers riding the waves on Maroubra Beach after authorities closed down two adjacent beaches in Sydney. (Photo by Saeed KHAN / AFP)
TT

Researchers: Surfboards with Bright Lights Could Deter Shark Attacks

This picture taken on October 16, 2024, shows surfers riding the waves on Maroubra Beach after authorities closed down two adjacent beaches in Sydney. (Photo by Saeed KHAN / AFP)
This picture taken on October 16, 2024, shows surfers riding the waves on Maroubra Beach after authorities closed down two adjacent beaches in Sydney. (Photo by Saeed KHAN / AFP)

Covering your surfboard in bright lights sounds like an open invitation to great white sharks, but research released Tuesday by Australian scientists found it might actually stave off attacks.

Biologist Laura Ryan said the predator often attacked its prey from underneath, occasionally mistaking a surfer's silhouette for the outline of a seal.

Ryan and her fellow researchers showed that seal-shaped boards decked with bright horizontal lights were less likely to be attacked by great white sharks.

This appeared to be because the lights distorted the silhouette on the ocean's surface, making it appear less appetizing, AFP reported.

TRENDI "There is this longstanding fear of white sharks and part of that fear is that we don't understand them that well," said Ryan, from Australia's Macquarie University.

The study, published in the journal Current Biology, was conducted in the waters of South Africa's Mossel Bay, a popular great white feeding ground.

Seal-shaped decoys were strung with different configurations of LED lights and towed behind a boat to see which attracted the most attention.

Brighter lights were better at deterring sharks, the research found, while vertical lights were less effective than horizontal.

Ryan said the results were better than expected and is now in the process of building prototypes for use on the underside of kayaks and surfboards.

Australia has some of the world's most comprehensive shark management measures, including monitoring drones, shark nets and a tagging system that alerts authorities when a shark is near a crowded beach.

Ryan said her research could allow less invasive mitigation methods to be used.

More research was needed to see if bull and tiger sharks -- which have different predatory behavior -- responded to the lights in a similar way, the authors said.

There have been more than 1,200 shark incidents in Australia since 1791, of which 255 resulted in death, official data shows.

Great white sharks were responsible for 94 of those deaths.

NG



Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
TT

Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)

It is the world’s rarest whale, with only seven of its kind ever spotted. Almost nothing is known about the enigmatic species. But on Monday a small group of scientists and cultural experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery.

“I can’t tell you how extraordinary it is,” said a joyful Anton van Helden, senior marine science adviser for New Zealand’s conservation agency, who gave the spade-toothed whale its name to distinguish it from other beaked species. “For me personally, it’s unbelievable.”

Van Helden has studied beaked whales for 35 years, but Monday was the first time he has participated in a dissection of the spade-toothed variety. In fact, the careful study of the creature -- which washed up dead on a New Zealand beach in July — is the first ever to take place.

None has ever been seen alive at sea.

The list of what scientists don’t know about spade-toothed whales is longer than what they do know. They don’t know where in the ocean the whales live, why they’ve never been spotted in the wild, or what their brains look like. All beaked whales have different stomach systems and researchers don’t know how the spade-toothed kind processes its food. They don’t know how this one died.

Over the next week, researchers studying the 5-meter (16-foot) -long male at an agricultural research center near the city of Dunedin hope to find out.

“There may be parasites completely new to science that just live in this whale,” said van Helden, who thrilled at the chance of learning how the species produces sound and what it eats. “Who knows what we’ll discover?”

Only six other spade-toothed whales have ever been found, but all those discovered intact were buried before DNA testing could verify their identification.

New Zealand is a whale-stranding hotspot, with more than 5,000 episodes recorded since 1840, according to the Department of Conservation. The first spade-toothed whale bones were found in 1872 on New Zealand’s Pitt Island. Another discovery was made at an offshore island in the 1950s, and the bones of a third were found on Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island in 1986.

DNA sequencing in 2002 proved that all three specimens were of the same species — and that it was distinct from other beaked whales. But researchers studying the mammal couldn’t confirm whether the species was extinct until 2010, when two whole spade-toothed whales, both dead, washed up on a New Zealand beach. But none has been studied before.

On Monday, the seventh of its kind, surrounded by white-aproned scientists who were measuring and photographing, appeared relatively unblemished, giving no clue about its death. Researchers pointed out marks from cookiecutter sharks — normal, they said, and not the cause.

The dissection will be quiet, methodical and slower than usual, because it is being undertaken in partnership with Māori, New Zealand's Indigenous people. To Māori, whales are a taonga -– a precious treasure -– and the creature will be treated with the reverence afforded to an ancestor.

Members of the local iwi, or tribe, will be present throughout the dissection and consulted at each turn, allowing them to share traditional knowledge and observe customs, such as saying a karakia -– a prayer -– over the creature before the study begins.

“According to our beliefs and our traditions, this whale is a gift of Tangaroa, deity of the ocean,” said Tumai Cassidy from the local people Te Rūnanga Ōtākou. “It’s very important for us to respect that gift and to honor the whale.”

The iwi will keep the jawbone and teeth of the whale at the end of the dissection, before its skeleton is displayed in a museum. 3D printing will be used to replicate those parts, using a CT scan taken of the whale’s head this week.

“It all builds a richer picture for that species but also tells us how it interacts with our oceans,” Cassidy said.

It’s thought that spade-toothed whales live in the vast Southern Pacific Ocean, home to some of the world’s deepest ocean trenches. Beaked whales are the ocean's deepest divers for food, and the spade-toothed may rarely surface, adding to its mystery.

The assembled scientists on Monday included a few who had traveled from abroad to see the whale, which was put in refrigerated storage after its discovery.

“What we are interested in is not only how these animals died, but how they lived,” said Joy Reidenberg, a comparative anatomist from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “In discovering how they live, we are hoping to find discoveries that we can apply back to the human condition.”