In The Bowels Of The Shark

The first rays of sun already bathed the coast of Guadalupe Island and some managed to slip under the surface of the water. The sea was calm and the light twisted caustically in the sand in the background. Nobody could suspect that under the apparent tranquility of that water column the meeting of two white sharks was taking place.

They swam around each other, curious, sniffing, looking at each other, measuring their strength without reaching their teeth. However, something strange was happening. The larger of the two moved awkwardly. He swam slowly and had trouble maneuvering. The reason was hidden under his skin. Between his steely ribs was a man, a living man, and that man was Fabien Costeau.

All the truth

Our clumsy shark is called Troy, and to be exact, it's not a real shark. It is a sophisticated trompe l'oeil, a submarine with capacity for a single person. Fabien and his team had been designing the perfect imitation for months. Every little detail had been designed to fool other sharks and make them believe that Troy was one of them. The way of swimming, the movement of the eyes, the texture of the skin (1).

For Fabien the objective of Troy was clear, or at least it was before the press. All this staging sought to demonstrate that sharks are not the bloodthirsty beasts that the myth tells us. Since Fabien has memory, his life and his last name have been linked to the sea. At four years old his father Jean-Michel taught him how to snorkel. Eight years later, with only twelve, he was already part of the crew of the Calypso, the ship of his grandfather, Jacques-Yves Costeau. The great blue runs through his veins and he knew that the bad reputation of the sharks was undeserved.

Fabien knew as well as any sailor the trick behind the pictures of hungry sharks. Those spectacular images loaded with photographic prizes where a shark rams the camera with its jaws open. The great majority of sightings of sharks are not fortuitous, they are sought, and for this it is necessary to attract them. The way to get the attention of a shark is simple: carnaza. The carnaza is a mixture of blood, fish and other remains, which serves as bait. The great smell of the sharks does the rest and soon the first specimens arrive, but there is a problem, they are hungry. In fact, this technique is known as chumming (2) and is considered dangerous, as it is believed that it can cause sharks to associate human presence with "feeding time".

But we can still force the situation further. In case a hungry shark in full banquet does not sell enough, we can always make him chase a piece of meat that comes directly to our goal. Meanwhile, the photographer is protected in a large metal cage that disturbs the environment of the shark. It is clear that no matter how spectacular the images are, there is something that of course they lack, and it is realism.

These photographs do not represent the true behavior of sharks and Fabien was aware. If we wanted to see them as they really are when they are alone, we needed to photograph them in secret. No flesh, no decoys, no metal cages, but how?

The answer, surprisingly, seemed to be in the comics of a Belgian boy and his dog. Specifically in The Treasure of Rackham the Red. In this adventure, Tintin piloted a shark-shaped submarine, invented by Professor Silvestre Tornasol. An idea began to circulate in Fabien's mind: What if he could build something similar? He was looking for something that would allow him to hide from sharks at a glance and even interact with them. At last he could show the public the true personality of the sharks.

$ 200,000 underwater trip We could say that Fabien's dream bordered on caprice, but luckily, the Costeau family had enough money and media prestige to satisfy that and much more. Moving the right threads Fabien managed to form a team of experts who would work to make his idea come true. At the head of the project put Eddie Paul, a leading engineer in Hollywood. Eddie was the perfect mix between science and effect that this team needed, and soon they got down to work.

Troy measured 4.3 meters and weighed 540 kilos, that meant that the remaining space for Fabien was very small. In fact, he had to ride it lying on his belly and carrying on his back 36 kilos of oxygen cylinders that gave him an autonomy of six and a half hours (3).

The work progressed, but certainly not as planned. What at first had promised to be a job of two months and $ 100,000 called Sushi, ended up being Troy two years and $ 200,000 later. However, after having solved the huge number of technical problems that sprang up everywhere, the submarine was finally ready.

Although the lack of space was suffocating, this was compensated with something more important, security. Fabien was doubly protected. First, by a row of metal arches of 5 cm thick arranged as ribs. In second, extending over the arches, there was a kind of skin made with a flexible tissue called Skinflex, used in prosthetic materials. The Skinflex will be reinforced with a Lexan polycarbonate resin, a bulletproof material and therefore tooth-proof (3).

Even Troy's color was a key aspect. The skin of a shark is designed to be hidden from the naked eye in what is called a counter-coloration mimicry or Thayer's law. It is not a whim that his belly is white and his back gray. It is a way of being confused with the surface if you look at them from the bottom and the bottom if you see them from the surface.

The mind of a demon

It was 2006 and, although late, the time had come. Troy was going to be released and the idea was to video record all possible encounters with other white sharks. Mind of a Demon (1) came to light promising to show the world the secret life of sharks, but the reality was very different: it was a failure.

No matter how original the idea of ​​Troy might seem, there was nothing special between the frames. The documentary turned out to be more a chronicle about the construction of Troy and the tensions between the team than a documentary about sharks (1).

Troy was slow, barely exceeding 5 knots (9.26 km / h), far from the 40 km / h peak speed of the great whites during their attacks (4). However, the biggest flaw was in another aspect: the smell.

But surprises follow us to the cellular level. Recent studies try to deepen the cellular mechanisms that allow sharks to heal their wounds so quickly, as others try to understand how their immune system manages to fight the growth of tumors. To think that such an implacable predator inhabits the oceans of the whole world instead of traveling in the Nostromo is overwhelming, but it leads us to another reflection.

And the more we learn from them, the more we discover that they are complex and communicative beings that establish social hierarchies. Behaviors that, although they can not be seen when we call them with carnaza, are not appreciated in Fabien's expensive and effective documentary. Because let's face it, if what I really wanted was to record them in secret there were a thousand cheaper and more discreet ways that did not involve dressing up as shark.

 This article is sent to us by Ignacio Crespo (@SdeStendhal) Author of the Stendhal S blog and the El Aleph and Tres Pies al Gato podcasts. Weekly contributor in A Ciencia Cierta in CV Radio, and sporadic in Coffee Break. Sub-champion of the contest of scientific monologues Famelab 2018 and semifinalist in 2017.