Shark Week

[sidd finch]

You would not catch me doing this but it did look pretty cool. The big question is how did they get the camera back....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auUxD3Qe3FU[/youtube]

Sidd

[Dave McElderry]

Wow! I could have watched a lot more of that.
How DID they get the camera back?

[Chuck Engels]

Found this, would imagine they do the same thing to remove the camera

The scientists managed to mount these devices on sharks’ pectoral fins by relying on a strange phenomenon known as “tonic immobility”: flip a shark over onto its back, and it suddenly goes into a calm, trance-like state.

After performing this maneuver with a subject shark, they would then gingerly flip it back right side up and hustle to get the camera on before the shark woke up. (If it started to struggle, they’d flip it back on its belly again.) Then they released the sharks, and let the cameras roll.

[Chuck Engels]

Then there are the sharks that just want to steal a camera, like this one...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYcUJ7-XA_I[/youtube]

[Dave McElderry]

Okay, but how did they keep up with the shark?

[sidd finch]

For the Great White sharks they harpoon the shark and implant a radio device on its dorsal fin. Then the have a GoPro equipped mini-sub that just follows the shark and records the video. Based on what I saw they are able to dislodge the tracking device remotely from the shark. The sub surfaces and they retrieve both from the ocean. The sub is called REMUS

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygB-VXwR_wM[/youtube]

Sidd