Hamish Jolly was frustrated with the number of shark attacks in Western Australia. Five fatal attacks occurred within a ten month period, and shark attacks in the last five years have escalated worldwide. His company Shark Attack Mitigation Systems worked with the University of Western Australia Oceans Institute to create technology that would reduce the risk of shark attack.
Jolly took inspiration from a conversation with Harry Butler, Australian naturalist and geologist. Butler told Hamish that a black wetsuit banded with yellow stripes to mimic warning patterns of marine species.
Research led Jolly to study the pilot fish, a striped fish that lives a symbiotic relationship with sharks. He studied Walter Starck, an oceanographer that began painting wetsuits for decades. Finally he found Pacific island tribes who perform a sea snake ceremony, painting themselves in stripes to ward off the shark god.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hamish_jolly_a_shark_deterrent_wetsuit_and_it_s_not_what_you_think#t-704030
Hamish began a search for shark vision experts and found professor Nathan Hart at the Oceans Institute. The development project consisted of three main phases. First the team took the three main species of predatory sharks and mapped their eye characteristics.
The second phase was to figure out exactly which patterns and shapes can be seen by sharks, to find what the sharks can see and what might confound a shark. The last part of the project was figuring out what surfers and ocean enthusiasts would actually wear.
Jolly provides a great discussion of the logistic problems associated with testing a shark-proof wetsuit. Baiting is required so that sharks will come close to the test rig, but that technically changes the behavior of the shark. Humans aren't able to be used to test the suits and ethically humanoid shapes should not be used.
The team's solution was to take a large neoprene drum, fill it with bait and wrap it in a neoprene skin. Cameras were used to study shark interaction with the drum. A black drum was used as the control group, to preserve the scientific method.
Hamish Jolly is a great speaker, and he really drives home the idea that his team took biological evidence and human anecdotal evidence together with the scientific method to develop the new wetsuit technology. The footage of sharks and their behavior with the control drum vs the SAMS drum is fantastic. Jolly's company is licensing the SAMS technology to wetsuit manufacturers and moving on to their next project.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hamish_jolly_a_shark_deterrent_wetsuit_and_it_s_not_what_you_think#t-704030