Shark Safe Barrier
A story of how the puzzle pieces of different ideas and expertise came together to change the face of shark conservation one net a time
Possibly no other animal than the Great White Shark has evoked the same depth of fear in society’s collective consciousness, perpetuated by Hollywood’s horror stories that likely marked the start of a narrative depicting a mindless killer looking to hunt beachgoers around the world.
It is ultimately a misconstrued story that not only the sharks, but with it hundreds of other animals, would fall victim to in the decades to come. Besides direct impacts such as shark-finning and poaching, other factors such as overfishing, and hence reduced food resources, are only some of the factors that have contributed to drastically declined populations of shark species.
And then there are shark nets and drumlines. The latter, in its simplest form, are baited hooks attached to a line, hoping to attract sharks that in the best-case scenario will be released further out at sea, and at its worst will be killed on the spot. Shark nets can be hundreds of meters long, several meters high – an almost invisible barrier to marine life such as dolphins, turtles, sharks, birds, all of which drown in their hundreds every year after having become entangled in them.
So, whilst the (rather simplified) notion behind these devices is fewer sharks, fewer attacks, the now well-known disastrous effects on our marine wildlife – sharks included – beg the question of why they are still being used.
With the first experiment of a shark net-type structure deployed in the 1920s , and the first official shark nets installed in in the 1930s, it is a long-standing practice of almost a hundred years.
Mostly to protect coastal tourism, these mechanisms stem from a time during which we knew very little about the marine environment and our huge impact on it.
During my interview with Dr Sara Andreotti from the SharkSafe Barrier™ she looks at me with her kind eyes and emphasizes that “it’s about time we make a change”.
Dr Andreotti is part of a team of dedicated shark experts and conservationists that have tirelessly worked on an eco-friendlier technology that would not only protect people but marine wildlife alike.
The team has combined research that indicated that large sharks avoid entering thick kelp forests and can be deterred by strong magnetic fields. The SharkSafe Barrier™ is thus composed of an array of multiple vertical tubes that mimics a thick forest of kelp. The proprietary magnetic technology, that creates a repellent unique to sharks, is embedded in the outer row of the structures to create an effective magnetic screen.
After years of proving its effectiveness with projects such as in Reunion Island, the latest official structure, and first commercial and permanent installation, was deployed in the Bahamas in 2023, further contributing to the pioneering shark conservation efforts there.
Having listened back to my interview with Dr Andreotti, or Sara, as I know her, I am not sure the written word can do justice by her beautifully nuanced character.
I clearly remember my first time meeting her.
Not knowing who she was or what she did for work, I walked into her husband’s dive shop in Simonstown, South Africa, and this curly head with a set of warm eyes and a big happy smile popped up from behind the counter.
Radiating a sense of kindness and happiness all at once, her grin invites you like open arms, welcoming you in, to be part of her world.
There is no pretense, there is no awkwardness. This short Italian lady with the unruly curls, and wittiest tongue I have come across in a long time, possesses a presence of the most beautiful childlike joy and curiosity, making her simply adorable.
Simultaneously, she carries herself with a humble confidence and a no-nonsense demeanor that speaks of a toughness and professionalism, leaving no doubt about her impact in the marine biology field.
It would be very hard not to be enamored by this unique and nowadays rather rare charm of hers, and I am very grateful she made time to sit down with me to discuss the The SharkSafe Barrier™ project she and her colleagues are working on.
Sara is a marine biologist, and as is the case for many of us, her love for animals and the natural world is what first got her started.
Although she mentions a more land-based aspiration at a younger age, wanting to go into veterinary studies before learning it would include putting down beloved pets – something young Sara couldn’t fathom. She recalls the shift to the marine world when “discovering that there was a job where I could work with animals out at sea”. In the eyes of her younger self, a less traumatic way of spending your working life with animals!
Years of hard work later, she holds a position as Extraordinary Lecturer at Stellenbosch University, is one of the founding directors and COO of The SharkSafe Barrier™ ,and the co-founder of the SharkWise Project Pty.
Originally from Italy, following a meeting with the legendary “Sharkman” Mike Rutzen – South African shark behavioralist, conservationist, and film maker – she found herself moving to South Africa.
Mike has spent more time freediving with great white sharks without a cage than any other person and is one of the few people in the world that can understand and respond to shark behavior and body language. He gained international fame by appearing in several award-winning documentaries.
With a background in behavioral studies, Sara says she was amazed by his work and as she put it, she “just wanted to extract the knowledge from his head and put it on paper”, something her degree allowed her to do and was part of her Master’s plan.
They would soon realize that the first step would lie in in assessing actual numbers of great whites in South African waters before being able to dive into the behavioral studies. It is what led to the first national assessment of South African shark population numbers and genetic structure, supported by photographic IDs of the dorsal fins that serve as fingerprints, preventing double-counting.
Originally, Sara got interested in sharks when realizing how very little we actually knew about them. It is her natural curiosity that weaves through her work and keeps propelling her forward. Rather than seeing a hurdle, Sara feels inspired to find answers.
Great whites, however, weren‘t her focus initially. That was a redirection of her path, brought about by her chance encounter with Mike. Falling in love with shark conservation itself was a slow one, too, I realize as I ask her how she got first involved.
She admits that at the early stages of working with Mike, she knew little more than what was known in the mainstream. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king is the expression she uses to explain what led to a change in her awareness. “If you start working a few months with an animal that most know very little about, they want you to share your experiences”, she tells me, and consequently she found herself “scratching the surface of immersing myself in shark conservation”, looking at what other people in the field were sharing. Once again, her curiosity and drive to understand more is what kept her going – something I have certainly been witness to in the short time I have known her.
Going back to the population number studies, however, the sobering results were what really hit her, and got her committed to shark conservation.
At the time, South Africa was known, and marketed as the great white shark capital of the world, and Sara found herself having expectations of seeing thousands of sharks, and does recall how “yes, back then, every day you headed out you’d see sharks”, something hindsight taught her they took for granted. As their database grew to over 5000 good photo IDs of dorsal fins, the number of identified individuals plateaued at about 426. That is when the team realized that the problem was much bigger than anyone ever anticipated.
I ask her what it is like now, and she immediately exclaims “Oh, now you just don’t see them. In the good old days in one trip, you’d maybe find about 15 individuals, beginning to learn about their different characters and hierarchy”, learning to recognize individuals based on their behavior, and even bearing witness to different groups of sharks interacting with each other – counteracting the idea that these animals are completely solitary.
“It’s nothing like it used to be”, Sara reiterates. Theories as to why range from climate change, a shift of food resources, to orcas hunting them, to a shift of the entire population having moved to the South African east coast. Proof is lacking for any of these, which is concerning.
“Out of the 426 sharks we identified, none are found in Gansbaai or False Bay anymore” Sara recounts, “maybe some in Mossel Bay”.
“If someone up east went out regularly and was to report seeing hundreds of sharks”, Sara admits, she’d feel such a relief at the happiest news. That, however, hasn’t been the case.
The collective fear of (great white) sharks has been blown out of proportion and overshadows the intricacies there are to learn about the more than 500 species that couldn’t differ more from one another. Sara’s face lights up when she talks about the relationship she has fostered with the most feared of them all, ending on a wistful note that “it would be criminal if our fear of those beautiful animals drove them to extinction”.
“On the other side of that fear”, she continues, “there is this incredible animal”.
Sara cares because she fears missing out on getting to know them better.
Her story is one of many puzzle pieces that led to the The SharkSafe Barrier™, although in her humble way she makes it clear that it is all the brainchild of Mike Rutzen. As a South African spearfisherman, she explains, Mike shared common knowledge that great white sharks don’t typically enter the thick forest of kelp; sparking the idea of building artificial forests that he would carry with him for a few years.
Even more so, Sara tells me that when she first heard Mike’s idea in 2007, she tried to get funding to make it the focus of her PhD a year later.
“Here is this 24, 25 year old Italian woman asking for a few hundred thousand Euro to do a study in South Africa, to see if seaweed can chase away white sharks”, she chuckles as the tells me that, of course, the loan from Italian banks did not come through.
“But I tried”, she continues, and the idea would end up in a drawer until an encounter in 2011 brought Mike and Sara together with Dr. Craig O’ Connell and his colleagues, who were working on magnetic shark deterrent systems in Bimini, hoping to add them to fishing nets to reduce bycatch.
Especially considering conservation project timelines, it did not take long before both concepts were combined, and the first testing projects were carried out between 2012 and 2016.
“I am really proud that the team we have now is very strong, and that we are aligned with the same reason for what we are doing”, Sara lets me know as we discuss that with the creation of The SharkSafe Barrier™, they have eliminated one of the main arguments against abolishing shark nets and drumlines: a lacking alternative to protect coastal communities and their tourism.
And this touches on another aspect Sara mentions when I ask her what the project means to her. As part of her job, she encountered hundreds of people who were touched by shark-related accidents in one way or another. Her work inherently took her places with increased shark encounters and accidents, and hence she has witnessed the human side of that story, too. “I started this because of the sharks, but am now also continuing it for the human component”, she says, having realized the extensive trauma such accidents can carry for an entire community, and the repercussions long-term.
It is where one of her hopes for the project stem from. “If we can take the fear and the trauma out of it”, she emphasizes, “then we can open the door and create more space to discuss shark conservation on a broader level”.
I ask her what her biggest dreams are for the project, and I can just see the passionate 24-year-old asking Italian banks to fund her research to help shark conservation.
Sara wants to grow the company as fast as possible, but also as strongly and steadily as possible as to safeguard the integrity they have worked so hard on. Growing steadily serves her dream of getting rid of shark nets and culling policies within 5 years. And if not within that timeframe, “I hope within at least my lifetime so we have left the place in a little bit of a better shape than we found it – at least for the sharks”, she smiles. And I think it’s a beautiful sentiment.
Simultaneously, she recognizes that she can see a shift in the perception of sharks as an integral part of our marine systems.
“When I first started the work people often looked at me like I was completely out of my mind, this crazy Italian working with white sharks”, she laughs and continues in true Sara fashion “now they still do it, but for different reasons as when they get to know me and my humor”.
Time, Sara sighs, is one their biggest challenges. “The sharks are getting killed at a much faster rate than we are growing the company”, realizing that shark nets are not necessarily the biggest threat but maybe one of the easiest to remove.
She fears the consequences of the still mostly unchanged notion that the oceans are an infinite resource we could not possibly have an impact on as the human species, and that the false impression remains that sharks are still roaming the ocean in plenty and are in no need of extra protection. Sara stresses that “seeing more sharks doesn’t necessarily mean there are more”, and is more so pointing towards collapsing resources that mean fishermen with ever-evolving technology meet congregations of predators searching for prey. The reality is that we harvest the ocean at a rate that stands in no comparison to what has been done in the thousands of years before, and our collective concern in the field of marine conservation is what keeps moving us forward.
The truly special thing about Sara is that she hasn’t lost her joy and sense of adventure in all of it. “If she has not grown bitter after decades of doing the work, then what is my excuse?”, she challenges with a smile as she recalls a recent encounter with Dr Sylvia Earle.
And, she beautifully points out, “we have never been closer, of course”, and there is hope that growing the company by installing more structures, they will become go-to team to solve this particular problem, and that it will become an obvious solution to utilize a tool that saves rather than kills marine animals.
Our interview takes place just a couple of days after an American woman died in an incident with a charging bull elephant in one of Zimbabwe’s national parks. Looking at the news coverage and public reaction, the event is being described as a freak accident, and the elephant often called “aggressive” – in quotation marks.
It speaks of a different perception of these encounters on land in comparison to the marine world and conservation efforts there. It prompts Sara to another perspective, telling me that “even if all we are doing is keep the conversation going that the nets are such harmful devices and end up taking them out without replacing it with our barrier”, she muses towards the end of our interview, “maybe, just maybe there will be room for the conversation that if there is a shark-related accident, the knowledge will prevail that it was simply that, an accident.”
NB: all photos taken with permission from https://www.sharksafesolution.com