“If I’m confident in how (Sharkbanz) work, I’ll strap one on and jump in with a bull shark.”
The Newcastle-based shark fisherman Joel Nancarrow, a man who admits to a deep hatred of bull sharks and who famously pulled a half-ton bull out of the drink just off the beach at Camp Cove near where a kid was killed a few days earlier, is prepping to test the real world efficacy of Sharkbanz magnetic bracelets.
You know about these things, maybe you wear ‘em.
Do they work?
Well, back in December, the body of fifty-five-year-old triathlete Erica Fox, killed by a Great White, was identified by the Sharkbanz bracelet on her ankle.
And earlier that year, a Western Australian coroner ruled that even if the surfer Steven Payne had been wearing his Sharkbanz when he was attacked and disppeared by a Great White shark in waist-deep water, it wouldn’t have done a damn thing.
The raw magnets themselves are not particularly expensive for the type used, you can buy em off Amazon for a few bucks apiece, but Sharkbanz packages em real nice and in a bracelet you can wear on your wrist or ankle.
Joel Nancarrow, who goes by the handle Shark Jaw Restoration, wants to find out if wearing ’em is worth your two hundred-ish bucks.
My plan is to test these in real-life situations that I can create as close to beaches as possible. No burley, no dropping a live mackerel into a school of 20 sharks to watch them destroy it on camera.
I’ll be finding beaches that I know big bull sharks frequent thanks to local surfers all along the northern coast of NSW and commercial fisherman, I’ll be trying different times of the day, different tides, day and night. Hopefully, sunny and cloudy weather as well.
Remember, they are being tested to see what they do in an attack on humans that usually involves a single large 3m+ bull shark, I’ll be finding these sharks from shore and boat and feeding them baits with sharkbanz on them and baits without them on them, each bait will have a camera on them so there’s no doubt of the outcome.
I’m not out to burley up 20 sharks, get them riled up and watch them massacre a fish and destroy a company as that’s not a situation that we are going to be swimming in.
How ever, since we are getting so much support, lll do that just for fun to show you guys how wild things can get out there. At the end of it all, if I’m confident in how they work, Ill even strap one on and jump in with a bull as there’s no way I’d recommend something without having no doubt it will work.
Also, this is not funded by shark banz at all, so there’s nothing stopping other deterrent brands from backing their products and jumping on board, I have a week of planing, so tag any other deterrent companies you know of and get them to back their product and let us put them all to the test.
At this stage, we are thinking from coffs/wooli/yamba/tweed heads over a course of 2 weeks, but this could change depending on weather and reports.
To aid in his endeavours, Nancarrow has set up a Go Fund Me, chasing seven k, and which is currently at a little over four.
Donate here in the name of real world science etc.