It's Shark-Away by Ronko!

Actually, this might really work, according to a Keys researcher

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By RYAN McCARTHY

rmccarthy@keynoter.com

Posted - Saturday, October 25, 2008 07:01 AM EDT

Shark-attack movies have been terrifying moviegoers since Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-winning 1975 thriller "Jaws." But Florida Keys Community College professor Patrick Rice may have ruined that plot line for Hollywood directors.

The college's new director of marine sciences has discovered, along with partners in his Shark Defense Technologies business, several natural repellants that would have benefited Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss aboard the Orca.

Rice has developed remarkably effective repellants using chemicals, magnets and electro-positive metals. He put them on display earlier this month at the Aqua Ranch and Dynasty Marine in Marathon -- and the results were astounding.

Shark repellant demonstration

Click to see Dr. Patrick Rice demonstrate repelling sharks with magnets.

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Holding a large ceramic magnet, Rice awaited a nurse shark and two small bonnetheads to make their way around to him in a circular holding tank. As they did, he brought the magnet up against the outside of the tank and watched as the sharks quickly darted in the opposite direction.

He then placed five of the magnets in a straight line from the center of the tank to the wall and watched as the sharks turned back each time they encountered them. Even more impressive was watching the sharks navigate though the magnets as they lie in an "S" shape on the bottom of the tank.

Rice has found the electro-positive metals, or EPMs, have the same effect. He likens a shark's exposure to them to walking across carpet with socks on and being shocked by a doorknob.

"Sharks have sensitive electrical sensors on their nose called ampullaelorenzini," Rice explained. "They can detect electrical sensitivity to a billionth of a volt. When this occurs, it overwhelms the shark's senses and it blasts them."

But all of Shark Defense Technologies discoveries -- none are guaranteed to be 100 percent effective if a shark actually approaches you and you happen to have the repellent with you -- have come as a result of their chemical repellant studies.

According to Rice, shark repellant research has been going on since World War II, when the U.S. Navy attempted to develop a formula to protect sailors in the event of an emergency.

"They heard from commercial fishermen that sharks didn't like the smell of other rotting sharks and they tried to make a repellant out of it," he said. "They made their best guess and substituted an ammonia group for a substance in sharks called trimethylammineoxide."

The result, Rice said, was a largely ineffective product known as Shark Chaser that was used by the Navy for more than 30 years. He and his colleagues retraced their footsteps and performed chemical analysis, successfully identifying compounds in the decaying sharks.

"We've discovered four different chemicals that are all part of the soup that comes from the rotting shark and now we have synthetics, so we don't have to kill sharks to make it," Rice said.

The products have all undergone U.S. Environmental Protection Agency testing and are for sale at www.RepelSharks.com. Rice said they have a number of different uses.

The chemical repellant comes in aerosol form, which could come in handy to a boater stranded on a life raft or in a life vest in open water. It might also be useful to spearfishermen or freedivers, he said, because the can has a bug-bomb trigger made for underwater use.

Rice said he one day hopes to see magnet repellants replace the nets used to protect beachgoers from sharks in South Africa and Australia. He said the nets unnecessarily kill sharks and other sea life unnecessarily.

Visit www.sharkdefense.com for more information on the work Rice and his partners are doing.