It Just Consumed Me

”Normally, not photograph by MICHAEL MULLER something you want a shark scientist to say. But Eric Stroud is talking about his chemistry-lab quest for the ultimate shark repellent, which he appears to have found. The questions that remain: Does it work on the great white, the ocean’s most fearsome predator? And can a couple of rookie entrepreneurs get it to market?

- Charles Bethea

There's a house in Mossel Bay, South Africa, high on a hill overlooking the Indian Ocean, five hours east of Cape Town, where shark nerds from around the world come to live each year. I arrived this past June, after a long day on a small boat watching great whites chasing roped tuna heads.

The 2,000-pound sharks are common along the coast, which is why the property of Kenny Coskey—a laid-back local with a large house, an oil job offshore, and a close friend in the shark world—has become an ichthyologist commune of sorts.

A college-aged woman answered the door wearing a T-shirt that read SHARKS MAKE ME HAPPY. YOU? NOT SO MUCH. A toddler ran by with a toy shark. More shark-obsessed young people emerged. Most were interns with Oceans Research, a South African organization that specializes in tagging and studying sharks.

My boat trip was part of Oceans Research’s side gig: conducting tests on shark repellents. Keeping sharks away from surfers and ocean swimmers as if they were mosquitoes in the woods— either through smells, magnetic fields, or any number of other schemes—has become a holy grail of sorts for a certain set of ichthyologists and entrepreneurs.

“It’s not exactly trying toothpaste on rattlesnakes,” an intern told me. “But there are easier tests to conduct.”

“I assisted an LED-light trial soon after I arrived,” one woman said over beers as rap music played. “It didn’t go well.” Great whites were wooed to the side of a 26-foot research vessel with sardines and then flashed with powerful lights while tempting tuna heads were tossed in the light’s path. The strobe had little noticeable effect; the sharks tried to eat the heads anyway.