Bite-resistant wetsuit survives Great White attack as Sharkbanz fail on maneaters

"If Great Whites come in and they're planning on biting you it's game over with Sharkbanz."

The shark fisherman, Joel Nancarrow, who has been prodding the hell out of the Great White Industrial Complex, that group of scientists, researchers and so on, either ignorant or wilfully blind at the wild ol’ increase in Great White numbers in Australia, has just run a series of tests on shark deterrents.

In this case, Sharkbanz magnetic bracelets of the sort found on the ankle of fifty-five-year-old triathlete Erica Fox, killed by a Great White, and who was identified by the Sharkbanz bracelet on her ankle, and shark bite-resistant wetsuits, made from a polyethylene stronger than steel or kevlar.

His footage, filmed in shallow water where a shark has no deep-water runway for a hit from below, runs through Great Whites, bull sharks, grey nurse sharks and three kinds of whaler: bronze, dusky and silky. Some baits carry one band, some carry two, some carry none so he can compare. He swaps the cameras every hour and a half.

The standout result, surprise surprise, ain’t the bands. It’s the Shark Stop wetsuit. White sharks grabbed it, shook it, and spat it out without leaving a mark. The bands, meanwhile, worked on 150-kilo whalers and on nothing bigger.

“This is the testing we’ve done on shark bands,” says Nancarrow. “It’s independent testing. It’s all in environments like you’d be in on the beach. The sharks don’t get the chance for ambush attacks here.”

The wetsuit: Whites shook it and couldn’t mark it

The best performer on test isn’t a repellent at all. It’s a bite-resistant wetsuit, and Nancarrow fed it to White sharks and grey nurse.

“The wetsuit was probably the best thing I tried. Well, it’s not a deterrent, but after these videos, White sharks coming on, eating a wetsuit, shaking it, down the tens. And there was just no marking on them. They didn’t even pull threads on it.”

The catch, he says, is one the maker admits: the suit stops the teeth, not the jaw.

“The wetsuit company has come out and said you will get crush injuries, you will get broken bones, but you’re gonna survive.

You’re gonna have a lot more chance of making it to a hospital rather than bleeding out.”

For a man who won’t go in the water, it’s as close to an endorsement as he gets.

“I don’t swim or surf. If I did, I probably wouldn’t do it without wearing one of these wetsuits.”

The Sharkbanz were a different story.

“Once the shark decides to bite you, you are bait.”

Nancarrow knows the first objection: a bait isn’t a person.

“People are gonna go, oh, but you’re using bait, isn’t that different? No, it’s not. Once the shark decides to bite you, you are bait. You’re no different from the bit of fish that’s on the wire the shark’s about to eat. People always try and make excuses for the sharks, make excuses why something does or doesn’t work. Sometimes there is none. It just is what it is.”

The ambush line matters because it’s the company’s own. Sharkbanz’s website has described Great Whites as the only shark that acts as an ambush predator, attacking from distance at high speed, and says there is no effective way to prevent that type of attack.

Nancarrow’s Whites weren’t ambushing anything. White sharks: circled, sussed, ate.

The first White comes in with two bands on the bait. It circles. It does a lap. It has a look at the cameras.

“You can see it’s not really an ambush attack anyway,” says Nancarrow. “It circles, it swings in, it does what whites do. It’s sussing everything out. They have a look, they work out what they’re gonna do and then they decide whether they’re gonna eat or not.”

It eats. “Boom. Got it. Two shark bands on that.”

The second Great White doesn’t bother with the inspection.

“Didn’t even hesitate, grabs the bait, two shark bands on the bait, swings around and shakes. They grab, they shake, they carry on. It did not care about the shark bands in the slightest.”

Nancarrow ran Whites on bare baits too, as a control.

“Very similar feeding style with or without the band. I honestly could not notice the slightest bit of difference. They just grabbed baits and carried on.”

Bull sharks: “I’m not gonna beat around the bush”

The first bull, around 130 kilos, comes up from underneath and takes a bait rigged with Sharkbanz’s Zeppelin, a magnetic sinker the company markets to anglers to stop sharks taking hooked fish. “Grabs hold of it, chews. There’s no hesitation on that whatsoever.”

The second bull is bigger. It smacks a banded bait and swims around with it in its mouth for a long time before dropping it.

“Unfortunately, they don’t work on bulls,” says Nancarrow. “I’m not gonna beat around the bush. They don’t work on bull sharks, I don’t care what they say.”

He went back the next morning to try and catch it. He caught a male he believes was with that shark. “Biggest male I’ve ever seen, 3.1 metres long. Never seen a male bull shark even close to that size.”

Bronze whaler: 200 metres of line, band still on

Nancarrow hadn’t had a bite in ages and was winding in to check the camera. “As I pulled in, this thing just came ripping through the surf, grabbed hold of it, and in that short time dumped a couple of hundred metres of line. And the whole time the shark band’s hanging off it, paid no attention to it whatsoever.”

A big bronzy, he says, and a really big one.

Small whalers and duskies: the band works

Here’s the part Sharkbanz will like. A smaller whaler comes to a banded bait again and again. It wants it. It won’t take it.

“It comes in again, even mouth open. No, doesn’t want it. Comes in again, turns away. There is no doubt that shark is deterred by the shark band. No doubt in my mind.”

A dusky does the same: comes in, veers off, takes off.

“I found it works on your smaller, sort of 150-kilo whalers, duskies, silkies, all that sort of stuff,” says Nancarrow. “It definitely works. There’s no denying it. You can’t say it doesn’t, because the footage says it does.”

He says two bands might work on bigger bronzies. He wouldn’t trust them with bulls around.

The grey nurse, more a curio than a threat to swimmers, gets its own cameo, chewing on a test wetsuit for ages without leaving a mark. Nancarrow lumps it with the Whites, bulls and big whalers that “do not give the slightest shit about having a shark band on a bait.”

The bottom line is “the smaller whalers definitely are deterred by the sharbanz,” says Nancarrow. “The bigger whalers and the bull sharks and the White sharks and the nurse sharks do not give the slightest shit. If they come in and they’re planning on biting you, any of those man-eating species, it’s game over.”

And tigers?

“I haven’t tested them on a tiger. I’ll just tell you now, they’re not gonna work on a tiger.”