The thread was not out of line. I had hoped we might brainstorm onto something positive. For exanple.the sea snake pattern decal for the bottom of board interests me. I would like to think that most people here have the ability to airbrush(spray),ink or pigment a pattern that even remotely has chance to deter shark.
Haole is a bummer but no reason to scrap entire dscussion. This is the most aggresive shark activity ever recorded on one of the Hawaiian Islands. Surf related of course but also could lean toward possible solutions. Sticking your head in the sand does not help. The obvious exception is to kill story in order to protect tourism.
I don’t know of a single family that would’nt be affected by a drastic drop in visitors. Should have been here right after 911. I was working in Waikiki and the place was like a ghost town. An Eeire experience. Only ABC store open at 9pm. We made it through.
My wife just dropped in and showed me a local news flash involving two divers and an aggresive …happened today,no injuries. So I choose to run my rear fins with an 1/8 of toe and cant 2*. symetric foil and roughly 6" apart on a 13" baby squash tail. Big cruiser so staying conservative. Really enjoy making boards that feel good to ride. Takes time and patience to realise what does what and why then try to match that to the surfer and what they want and why. Still miss on a few but that is what keeps it going. Working through the mistakes and disappointment, not bullshitting around it or blaming others. Stand up and deliver cuz.
The shark camo stuff makes sense to me, and when I used to surf where there were tigers around, all my boards had it on the bottom. Looked cool as well:
After that Orca ate a great white off of San Fransisco, all the whites in the whole area disappeared. Some were tracked as far away as Hawaii. I’ve been toying with the idea of painting the bottom to look like an Orca. Sharks don’t lke Orcas, but they may go after baby ones like the size of a surfboard.
There’s someone who has created a repelent. I think it needs to be the oil/blood from a shark’s liver, and may have to be of the same species. I haven’t followed what they are doing and if they know for sure that you need can only deal with a specific species.
Where I grew up had a lot of sharks so we usually look out for any activity. That has a good and bad side. I see them all the time. If I don’t look or care, I don’t notice them until they jump out of the water or make themselves very obvious.
Sharkcountry, The chemist that are working on the Shark Repellant are in NJ. It is a Hormon that ashark releases into the water after a violent death. The Hormon seems to bea warning to other sharks to get out of town and fast. They got the idea from The Orca killing the shark off the Farllon Islands outside of San Franisco. I saw video of a test they did in The Bahamas at a Shark reserch facility
A Shark was turned up side down to put in in a coma. They then put a few drops of the hormons in the water near the Shark. It not only woke up from the Coma it could not get away from The Hormon fast enough.
Last year on the SUP, I had a great white underneath swimming with me and just a head on my right side. I wasn’t afraid, same place where the doc was taken in SD. Still it could have doubled back at any time, and well that part didn’t happen; regardless it was a super-charged experience. The magnificence of the outline is almost overwhelming, still I don’t think they should be afforded international protection status. Where I had my place in Mex, after they put in the tuna pens, you couldn’t hike the beach without being cautious because of the amount of dead, rotting seal carcasses with gaping bite wounds; for some reason my dogs loved to roll on them, and its the worst smell ever. Furthermore I heard from a fisherman that a 17’er jumped the 7’ electric fence to get in to the pen.
On another note, I used to camp out at the lighthouse on Todos because I knew Tony the lighthouse keeper, and every spring when the whales would migrate scientists would come to study, I asked them about the sharks, and they told me that’s nothing compared to the orcas- just something to think about. The afternoon low-tide with the northwest winds and the smell of seals warming themselves on the rocks mixed with guano is best experienced than trying to describe, and it always made me wonder what was swimming underneath.
In the mid 80’s, a friend and I were surfing between Half Moon Bay and San Francisco, and a pod of killer whales suddenly appeared just outside the lineup.
We were watching them when suddenly one surfaced maybe 10’ from us, rolled a bit to provide a straight field of vision, and stared at us with that large eye for well over a minute, just floating there, before slowly sinking back down underwater. A set rolled in, we rode ashore, spent the next half hour watching the Oracas just nosing inside and outside of the lineup before finally moving on.
Neither of us felt a moment of fear in that encounter, just sheer awe at the majesty of the animal, and the undeniable intelligence gleaming from that focused eye.
Prior to that encounter,fisherman trolling for salmon outside had been reporting multiple White sightings on a daily basis from HMB to SF. Typical that time of year, when migrating salmon show up chasing migragting bait fish, seals start chasing the salmon, and Whitey moves inshore to chase the sea lions.
After that pod of Killer whales showed up? Not a single Whitey spotted during the rest of salmon season…
We’ve been keeping our eyes open up here in Oregon. Two days after the White attack on the surfers at Gleneden, what was most likely the same White made a high speed run in between 3 surfers just north of where the earlier attack had been made.
We’ve got one guy up here, he’s had his board munched on twice by a White during a 10 year period. personally, would consider that a damn good sign to relocate…elsewhere
I’ve had the unfortunate or fortunate chance of seeing Tiger sharks up close and personal. Once when a smaller tiger about 6 feet or so swam under my board while I was on a wave at Barber’s Pt. The shark stayed a couple feet in front of me just below the surface skimming along in front of the wave. If I fell off it probably would have bit me. Another time I was out with a bunch of guys at Tennis Courts when the manager came in with her baby. She swam right through the line up during a lull and the pack split in half. I was within 10 yards maybe less of this monster, easily 12 feet long and big around. She just calmly swam toawrds the mouth of Kewalo basin. Many of the guys out that day had seen her before, but that was my first time. The water at Ala Moana is clear as can be so I got quite a view of her.
I’ve seen sharks chasing fish, and I’ve seen them in a feeding frenzy, but I’ve been very lucky to never be around when a human was bitten. I pray to Akua, my tutu, and all those who are protecting me that I never have to witness that.
The sacriest thing I’ve had to deal with was a monk seal popping up about 2 feet away. The damned thing was very wide and a tiger shark that big around would be able to take my whole body in it’s mouth.
Black tips, white tips, and hammerheads are always around, but somehow they don’t look as scary as the tigers do.
I recall that somebody painted one of their boards to look like an orca on here. If I remember right, it had a rather wide nose and sort of looked like a whale even, cause the tail got skinnier? It wasn’t to scare off sharks I don’t think, but it was cool.