Scientists are suggesting placing magnets alongside fishing hooks to repel grey nurse sharks and help save them. Hooray! We’re saving the endangered sharks! Help!
Once they work out how to repel sharks with magnets, they’re going to work on repelling box jellyfish with reef-knots and woggles.
Unfortunately if you use the wrong polarity magnet, you’ll drag sharks in from all over the ocean. / you’ll end up with sharks stuck all over you.
Of course, this is the real reason grey nurses never get fillings.
It turns out that that shark wasn’t trying to tear you to shreds in a blood-fuelled feeding frenzy – it was trying to show you North. / just trying to navigate.
The electroreceptors on a shark are called the “Ampullae of Lorenzini”. I wish I had a body part that sounded as cool as that. / Sure sounds more exciting than our body parts. “Ampullae of Lorenzini”… “elbow”. See?
The grey nurses detect tiny electrical charges from potential prey’s muscles through pores around their snouts known as “ampullae of Lorenzini”. A fancy name, but a fitting tribute to Stephan Lorenzini, who was the first person to discover them, as he was being torn to shreds. / After Stephan Lorenzini, who never saw them coming.
Very powerful magnets can repel the grey nurses, thus stopping them getting infections from hooks. So by merely a huge inconvenience to fishermen, these brutal monsters can be saved from their hopelessly inadequate immune systems.
Very powerful magnets can repel the sharks. Especially if they’re shaped into some sort of harpoon and fired at the finny toothy bastards.
It’s a bit of an inconvenience to fishermen. Not only do they have to fit the cumbersome magnets, they also keep catching iron filings. / but the resulting hauls of iron filing fish are all too small to keep.
And apparently we can repel great whites by shooting at them with rocket-launchers. (I guess the rockets must be magnetic or something.)
I always suspected magnets could repel sharks. I was just too scared to try it.
Using a shark to navigate is much cooler than using a compass. Although granted, a compass is less likely to tear you to shreds with its rows upon rows of serrated teeth. Depending on the brand.
And it’s the magnetic properties of sharks that is behind the old saying “never eat flake near your computer”.
And this is why you never hear news stories about magnets taken at sea.
Magnets are the natural enemies of grey nurses – they’re both drawn to iron.
It’s been known that magnets repel sharks ever since the X-Men swimming contest. The good guys didn’t come off so well that time.
I think I must be magnetic. I definitely find sharks repulsive.
Unfortunately, the first scientist who tried the experiment held the magnet the wrong way around. But the violent mass feeding frenzy suggested he was definitely onto something.
Good to hear sharks getting some positive press about repulsion. They always attract the negative.
