I am Afraid of Shark attacks! So how can I prevent that?

The biggest thing that surfers and swimmers fear when they head out in the ocean is being attacked by a shark. A new study released by Australian scientists have discovered that sharks may be colour blind. This can make waters safer for people in the ocean and it also might prevent animals form accidentally getting entangled inside fishing nets. Using a technique called microspectrophyotometry, scientists examined the cells of seventeen species of sharks, caught of the shores of New Zealand and Australia. The retina(a delicate, multilayered light sensitive membrane lining the inner eyeball and connected by the optic nerve to the brain) of a normal living creature is made up of two kinds of light receiving cells. Which light sensitive and help measure brightness, allowing normal eyesight day and night out. Scientists were able to find many Rod cells in the different species of 10 of the seventeen sharks but the other seven did have some Cone cells. But only of a single type, sensitive to colour wavelengths of about 530 nanometer, which is the wave length of the colour green. This means while fish are able to distinguish between shades of grey and in some cases even blue/green, they cannot see any other colours. This research is also similar to other research for other sea animals like whales, dolphins, and seals that all have the green Come cells. So scientists believe that bright colours are not important to these sea creature because colours are quit useless in the dark waters they live in. Instead they seek their prey on how much contrasts stand out compared to the surrounding waters. So since there are over 400 different types of sharks, more studies must be done to see if the colour blindness extends to all of them. So if swimmers and surfers change their colours of clothing to darker they might not get attacked by any sharks in the ocean.




Again this time I wanted to do research on an article about animals but for a change a type of sea animal. So again I went to DOGO news because I really liked the articles they have there. And I cam across an article and it was the title that just got me interested in it. It was called,"Afraid of Sharks? Wear dark colours!" so of course I clicked on it. I learned a lot from this article because for a start I didn't even know that sharks had this problem with dark colours. And I agree with scientists because well for a start this can save more people and more sharks.

Bibliography
"Afraid Of Sharks? Wear Dark Colors! - Kids News Article." DOGO News - Kids News Articles! Kids Current Events; plus Kids News on Science, Sports, and More! Web. 22 Sept. 2011. .

Person who wrote this
Meera Dolasia on 01/28/2011