These guys have developed chemical Shark Repllants and just won the World Wildlife Funds Contest for Smart Gear, from among 80 entries with magnets to repel sharks from Long Line Trawler’s fish hooks.
Sharks are known to be able to detect magnetic fields – they use this sense to detect Earth’s magnetic field and orient around the ocean. It appras that they wil also avoid artificial magnetic fields that would clutter their orientation.
Every year thousands of sharks die after becoming snared on hooks set by commercial fisheries to catch tuna and swordfish and this has literally pushed some shark species to the brink of extinction. According to the WWF, 89% of hammerhead sharks and 80% of thresher and white sharks have disappeared from the Northeast Atlantic Ocean in the last 18 years, largely due to bycatch.