'Desperate residents turned to a renowned free-diver for a solution.'

July 8, 2012 3:10 PM

"Local marine experts believed the problem could be solved only if it could be determined why the sharks were venturing so close to the beaches. This meant finding someone with the knowledge, expertise, and courage to spend an extended period of time in the water with the animals themselves, unraveling the mystery. They called Belgian Fred Buyle, the world's foremost shark tagger, a gifted free-diver able to hold his breath for seven minutes and swim to depths below 300 feet." Meet The Shark Whisperer

Single-page print-ready version. Buyle was interviewed by DIVER magazine.

He was a freediving world record-holder, but now Fred Buyle makes his living as underwater photographer, instructor, expedition-organiser and shark-tagger, as his new book [apnea] illustrates through jaw-dropping shots – all taken in the most stripped-down way imaginable.

Fred Buyle's photographic work is available at his webiste, Nektos.net. His website Ocean Encounters, on breath-hold diving and exploration, has a video of Great White encounters on Youtube. Fred Buyle also has a DailyMotion video account and a Twitter feed.

Travel guide for Reunion, with a photograph of Boucan Canot beach halfway down the page.

Previously on MetaFilter, another shark whisperer

posted by the man of twists and turns (13 comments total)

I'm not entirely convinced that shark whisperers are all that they're cracked up to be.
posted by Jakey at 3:31 PM on July 8, 2012

Surely they should be called Shark Gurglers. Even before their chests are crushed.
posted by srboisvert at 3:40 PM on July 8, 2012 [2 favorites]

He's not crazy, you know. Spielberg ruined sharks for me, love them but he awakened a primal fear that sits at the back of my head when I'm near the ocean.
posted by arcticseal at 3:54 PM on July 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

he awakened a primal fear

I'm not surprised, arcticseal.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:02 PM on July 8, 2012 [5 favorites]

You're gonna need a bigger Buyle.
posted by orme at 5:36 PM on July 8, 2012

Schnöller says a fisherman in Australia discovered that sharks, which have keen audio senses and can home in on prey from up to 800 feet away, were attracted to the sound of AC/DC – "You Shook Me All Night Long," in particular.
posted by jason's_planet at 6:44 PM on July 8, 2012

I used to work in a marina. I'm vegetarian, so I was always shocked about stuff with the fish people would cut up there.

But one day, a guy came in with a Mako shark. He had spent hours on the boat with it getting home and then an hour or so celebrating it and butchering it. His friend came by to help in load up his truck. First, he walked by with the heart of the shark, still beating. It had been out of the thing for a while. So that was creepy.

But then the guy walked by with the wheelbarrow of steaks. The meat was FLEXING. Those things are amazing, beautiful creatures, perfectly designed for everything they have to do but deal with mankind. But they do not die.
posted by nevercalm at 7:03 PM on July 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

Grizzly Man.
posted by LarryC at 7:44 PM on July 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

The Cape Cod Times ran a photo of a great white shark following a kayaker off Nauset Beach. Naturally, they ran the only suitable headline.
posted by adamg at 7:57 PM on July 8, 2012 [3 favorites]

Wow. Who knew you had to be able to hold your breath for 7 minutes to be able to figure out that hungry sharks (warning: pleonasm) go where the food is.
posted by falcon at 2:11 AM on July 9, 2012

adamg, what was the headline? I can't see it in this archive of the story: http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120708/NEWS/207080347/-1/news2501
posted by wenestvedt at 8:04 AM on July 9, 2012

Don't always have to whisper, I guess:

Survival Case Studies: Alone on the Water : 'The most terrifying thing about sharks is how silent their approach is. It was 1 a.m., and for 40 hours I’d been stranded on my kiteboard in the Red Sea, waiting for the wind to pick up.'
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:18 AM on July 12, 2012

LRB: Don’t wear yum-yum yellow

In as far as we understand the subject – only a few species have been observed mating – the business is ‘very rough’. Larger male sharks have to bite or trap the females to keep them around during courtship; marine biologists can tell when a female has been mating because her skin will be raw or bleeding. The process is so violent that, come the mating season, female nurse sharks will stay in shallow water with their reproductive openings pressed firmly to the sea floor. Otherwise they risk falling prey to roaming bands of males who ‘will take turns inserting their claspers in her’ (the clasper is the shark version of a penis, found in a pair behind the pelvic fins). A litter of fifty pups will have anything from two to seven fathers. But the reproductive story gets rougher still. A number of shark species go in for oophagy, or uterine cannibalism. Sand tiger foetuses ‘eat each other in utero, acting out the harshest form of sibling rivalry imaginable’. Only two babies emerge, one from each of the mother shark’s uteruses: the survivors have eaten everything else.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:33 PM on July 29, 2012