A new set of wetsuits designed in a collaboration between an Australian university and a design company aims to fool colorblind sharks, enabling swimmers wearing the suits to escape encounters with the dangerous creatures unscathed.
The suits are designed by the designer firm Shark Attack Mitigation System with the help of professors from the University of Western Australia’s Ocean Institutes. One is light-blue and white and is meant to camouflage a swimmer or diver in the sea, and another with white and dark-blue stripes that is meant to confuse the shark by making the wearer seem dangerous to attack.
“The second design makes the user appear highly visible while using disruptive colour patterns totally unlike any normal prey,” according to the design firm’s website.
Professors Shaun Collins and Nathan Hart, who have been studying shark vision for years, recently discovered that sharks see in black and white. Sharks rely on a range of senses to target prey, but use sight to focus in the final few seconds before attacking, a span of time targeted by the designers.
“The technology that we’ve developed has created confusion for their sight sense,” said Craig Anderson, director with the design firm, in a video released by the firm.
Bob Lushey, with Radiator Wetsuits, which is selling the suits, and who has worked in the business for over 20 years, said that the question they are asked the most is: “‘What color do sharks like? I don’t want to look like a seal.’”
Western Australia is known as one of the most dangerous places in the world in terms of shark attacks, with five people dying from such attacks over the last two years.
The designers plan on expanding the color schemes to other products, such as surfboards, kayaks, and stickers for diving air tanks. Surfboard stickers are already available.
