Mythbusters with African Shark Eco-Charters

Many people have asked us what myths the mythbusters came to bust. Well I have found a site that says it better than I would so I am just going to copy and paste it in for you ( taken from http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2007/11/episode_90_supersized_myths.html )

However the photo's are all ours.

Supersized Shark

See also: Jaws Special

Jamie and Adam shipped their gear to False Bay, South Africa (near Cape Town), where they hired African Shark Eco Charters to take them out into waters infested with great white sharks. Seal Island, located just 5.7 km off the coast, is home to innumerable seals. The huge seal population also attracts the great whites. On an initial site-seeing trip, Adam and Jamie got to see first-hand how many: Jamie couldn't even finish his explanation before a seal decoy they dropped in the water was hit by a great white breaching out of the water. They lured the sharks closer using tuna heads and Jamie went for a closer look inside the shark cage. He got quite a show as a shark got a full nose into the cage and knocked things around. Meanwhile, Adam didn't take enough ginger pills and spent much of the trip seasick.

Adam: "South Africa has been pretty crazy to us so far. We did see an air attack, Jamie almost got eaten, I threw up -- Now we are able to start our tests."
Supersized Shark Myth 1: Sharks attracted to noises

Myth: Sharks are attracted to low-frequency noises (40hz) that sound like an animal thrashing around

The theory is that the great white sharks detect the low frequency noises using lateral lines that run along the length of their body. Jamie supposed that there was some credence to this theory, given that the operators of their shark cruise rap on the side of the boat to attract the great whites.

Jamie once again went in the water along with an underwater speaker system that first blasted the MythBusters theme song to the surrounding sea life.

Jamie (to Adam): "If you're gonna be sick, can you be sick on the other side of the boat, over"

With Jamie in the water, they tried three tests: * 40hz hum for 10 minutes: no sign of sharks * 0-40hz sweep: presuming that 40hz was too precise, they swept the sound from 0-40hz. Still no sign of sharks. * High frequency: they went in the other direction, blasting a high pitched noise instead. A single shark appeared

Not knowing if Jamie was a factor in the sharks (not) appearing, they pulled Jamie out of the water and repeated the same series of tests. This time, no sharks appeared at all.

busted
Supersized Shark Myth 2: Sharks are afraid of dolphins

Myth: Sharks are afraid of dolphins

Marine biologists speculated that dolphins are intelligent enough to be capable of altruistic acts, such as rescuing animals of other species from shark attacks. They MythBusters researchers dug up two incidents from 2004 that seemed to confirm this myth. In New Zealand, lifeguards training on a beach reported a great white appearing on the beach and then swimming away when a dolphin swam up. Similarly, in Australia, a fisherman capsized and was stranded for two days. Great whites approached but were repelled by a dolphin.

Jamie and Adam constructed a foam, animatronic dolphin after studying the swimming motion of Merlin the dolphin at Discovery Kingdom. Adam cut out a dolphin model from a block of upholstery foam. He used a printout of a 3D dolphin model they found online as a guide. Meanwhile, Jamie worked on generating the dolphin tail motion that they figured was crucial to fooling the sharks. He connected an electric drill to an off-centered crank to create the undulations. Bike chain was used as a mechanical spine. When the drill was turned on, the entire rig flapped up and down like a dolphin.

Down in South Africa, they conducted a series of tests to see if the animatronic dolphin was a shark deterrent: * Seal decoy: the seal decoy was hit by a shark within five seconds of being dropped in the water * Seal decoy + animatronic dolphin: the dolphin and seal decoys cruised along the water close together. A great white fin broke the surface between the fake dolphin and seal, but no bite. * Tuna heads + animatronic dolphin: They upped the ante by throwing a tuna head into the water. As a shark approached the tuna head, they pulled the dolphin over -- the shark swam away. They repeated the test again with the same result. * Tuna heads: With the fake dolphin out of the water, the great white went to town on the tuna heads.

The sharks may not have been 'afraid' of the dolphins, but they did seem to be deterred.

plausible

I know they say plausible, but seeing it, it seemed more than plausable to us.It was amazing how the sharks swam AWAY from the dolphin.