Shark Attack Test- Human Blood vs. Fish Blood

This is a specialized human shaped shark cage I designed. And this is me in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy in that cage, which, as it happens, doesn't actually keep the sharks out.

They're in the freakin cage.

But to understand how I ended up in the middle of the Bahamas with buckets of blood, surrounded by a butt ton of sharks, we've got to go back exactly one year, because that's when I ran a test to see what really happens if sharks smell a drop of human blood in the water. For that experiment, I pumped out 15 drops of human blood per minute for an hour. Pretty close to a bunch of sharks that in the end, just weren't really that interested. So this busted the myth from the movies that sharks are these ruthless killers that just go crazy if they smell a drop of your blood from a mile away. But those results made me really curious if the sharks would react differently to fish blood versus human blood. And if they did go crazy for fish blood, could I use that to put myself right at the center of a shark feeding frenzy? And so to satiate my curiosity, my friends at Discovery helped me make my way back to the Bahamas as part of Shark Week this year. But this time, I wouldn't be alone.

What up, robes?

Oh, wow. Mark's jumping in on this. What's up, y'?

All?

Look. Last Shark Week, shark tried to kill me. I figure we'll have a little bit of science with Rober, little bit of fun with. Dude. Perfect. And a little bit of me. All right, y' all ready to do this?

We were born ready, sir.

All right, chop chop. Let's get to it, fellas.

We will not let you down. Looking forward to it. See ya. Yeah. I've got this idea for a build to just get me in close with the sharks. Last year, I was in the water Roba Robert.

That was me saying, I'm finished with the call, bro.

No, of course.

All right, see you guys later. Let's get to it.

Let's do this. Looking forward to it. And so, under the direction of Shaq Diesel, it was time to head to the Bahamas. All that was left was to swab my nose to prove to the Bahamian government that I didn't have coronavirus. The only problem was my test came back positive. And this just made me really sad because not only was I gonna miss out on this episode adventure, but as far as I was concerned, I was basically just waiting to die. And I had to interact with my family through the glass door to the backyard using a laser pointer. And not even Fat Gus would get within six feet of me. Now, I'm happy to say I eventually beat the Rona and tested negative. But the only problem now is I missed my chance because they were no longer accepting any commercial flights from America. Cuz we're number one, baby. So I was once again incredibly sad. Until I found a loophole. Because while you couldn't go to the Bahamas on a public commercial flight, there were no rules against going to the Bahamas on a private jet. And since this was the first and last time I would ever have my own personal G6, I acted like I'd been here before. Like the true professional I am. I mean, mostly. Put Elon on hold and transfer to Oprah. And I should mention, flying across country on your own plane isn't the most ecologically responsible choice. So while I was in the air, I utilized this website called teamtrees.org you might have heard of it, to plant enough trees to suck up the carbon not only for my flight, but the next 100 flights this plane would take. In the end, it's important you guys know I'm still super grounded and I didn't let the experience change me one bit. And so now that I was in the Bahamas, the first thing I did was check in with my marine biologist, shark diving expert buddy, Luke Tipple. Because we need to figure out how to somehow get blood out of a fish. Just like that. This is how we do it. The first thought is like, can you just freaking blend a fish? Give it a shot. I'll be over here. Dude, you've clearly never seen will it blend? There's a whole YouTube channel dedicated to this. Ready? Okay. I think if we add a little bit of water. Yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah. This looks like the number 32 from Jamba Juice. We tried a variety of other techniques and eventually started hitting our stride and the bucket started filling up. If I could smell this, that looks pretty delicious. The good thing about Mark is it's his stupid idea, but he's not making other people do it. I respect that about me too. I also learned this is what fish gills look like on the inside. They're like pages in a book to increase the surface area, which maximizes the oxygen they can pull out of the water. So we've taken about 20 fish with a little bit of help from the blender, turn them into this. If I'm a shark, I'm like, that's friggin delicious. Now that we had five gallons of mouth watering fish blood smoothie, it was time to get some answers. We already know that sharks don't necessarily go nuts in the presence of a little bit of human blood. But would they go nuts in the presence of a little bit of fish blood? And as a firm believer in the scientific method, it was time to test our hypothesis by heading out to sea. Once we were far enough from land, Luke and I came up with the game plan for the experiment. Basically, we would have two surfboards in the water. One would have a five gallon bucket of our fish blood smoothie, and then another would have five gallons of human blood. We would also have a third board that just had seawater as a control to make sure the sharks weren't just interested in the surfboards. Then we would pump out the contents of each of the buckets over the course of an hour and observe how many sharks approached each board. Then once we know which one they prefer, after this, we'll use that tomorrow in the cage just to create the most wild feeding frenzy. Right. Which sounds super fun to me because you're not in the cage. And so with the plan in place, all that was left to do was put the boards together and get them out with the sharks. One of the limitations to last year's test was that the boards might have been too close to the boat. So it's possible some of the sharks actually smelled the blood, but didn't investigate it because they were just waiting for a handout from the boat. So this time we basically placed the boards in the middle of the frickin ocean, super far away from the boat, so it wouldn't be a confounding variable. Oh, and I should also mention we ended up using cow's blood because it's really hard to legally find 5 gallons of human blood. And after talking with a couple shark scientists, they've shown experimentally that all mammal blood essentially smells the same to sharks, so it wouldn't affect the results to use cow blood in place of human blood. So now that all three boards were in place, we double checked to ensure each was anchored down to the ocean floor. Then I just had to start all three custom built pumps using our custom built remote trigger. Which is the exact moment I realized it must have got busted while being shipped out here because it wasn't sending a signal. Which sucks because there's absolutely no way to run the pumps manually. Luckily, a trick I learned while working at NASA is you always build redundancy into your systems just in case. So we have it in the code that if no remote start signal is received after an Hour, each of the pumps will just automatically start up on their own. It's just a feature we never had time to test, so we just had to firmly cross our fingers and hope for the best. I'm hopeful. We've had to overcome a lot to get here for this video. Well, it's one more little challenge. And at exactly one hour, right on cue, the backup code kicked in and saved our whole experiment with blood, now officially in the water. We put the drone into the air and started our observations. And things were pretty quiet for about the first 20 minutes. But then we had our first hit on the mammal blood board. Yeah, shark baby. Shark baby. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But pretty soon thereafter, things started heating up for the fish blood smoothie board. Oh, my gosh. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 sharks around the fish smoothie board. And then 10 minutes later, things were only more intense. Here you can see the difference in activity between the three boards. And while you're running an experiment and still collecting data, you really need to keep an open mind. But given what we were seeing, it was getting pretty difficult to remain objective. And so after an hour, we called the experiment and went inside to officially tally up the results using the drone footage. And it turns out the mammal blood board was approached eight times, the seawater control board was at zero, and the fish blood board had a whopping 134 approaches from a shark. It definitely seems like the fish smoothie is where it's at.

Right?

It's pretty obvious. Massive blob of sharks. No sharks. I think that's the go for tomorrow for me. Maximum feeding frenzy. Now that we had a game plan for my feeding frenzy cage, the next day, we headed back to shore and to our hotel to get some rest for what was to come. Oh, and fun side note, if the only way to get to a vacation destination is by private jet, it really cuts down on the crowds. We literally had this whole resort to ourselves. Well, almost to ourselves. There were, like, three 40 cats who apparently must also fly private. We woke up bright and early the next morning feeling refreshed and headed right back out to sea, where Luke and I prepared some massive bags of fish blood smoothie for me to burst open once I went down. It just seemed like a cool idea to make a cage to get in the middle of a fruiting frenzy. Until this moment. Now that they're making me put on freaking chain mail, makes me reconsider my life choices. If something terrible happens, Shaq, you gotta take care of my Family. Because this is all your fault.

Yeah, just go up.

And after several months of prep, unfortunately, it was time for me to get in. It also just so happens I might have forgot to mention this part to my wife.

I'm not looking under the water yet on purpose.

She might have been under the impression I was just doing another experiment with surfboards and pumps. Sorry, sweetie. Not only was I wearing 10 pounds of steel chainmail for protection, but my vest is also filled with 20 pounds of lead weights. That means I sank pretty fast. But also that the buoyancy to weight ratios were perfect for giving me practice for walking on the moon.

That's one small step for man, because.

Like many of you, I will definitely go to space in my lifetime. Again. Just haven't mentioned that to the wife yet.

Super Mario. Josh. Here we go. All right, you ready for the cup? Okay, Mike, the base is coming behind you right now.

Now that I had the fish smoothie bags and everyone was back at a safe distance, I just had to pop these stupid things.

Okay, here I go. Oh, this is crazy. What am I doing? Okay, the base is deployed. Get this star out of here. And here they come. Oh, my God. Look at them. That would have been my hand, and my hand was a T. Rex maneuver.

Oh.

Now they're literally like swimming circles around me. Oh, gosh. Oh. His head was engaged on the crab. This is certifies insane.

The sharks were literally trying to eat me through the bottom of the cage. So they left me no choice but to defend my honor.

Yeah. Get out of my cage. Get out of my cage. I'm gonna kill you, Sack. Get the heck out. Hey. Whoa. Yo, Crow. Get out of my cage. All right. My loves are blended.

We knew all along that the most dangerous part would be when I exited the cage, because they'd still be agitated, and they'd be stoked to finally have access to the soft, chewy center.

Okay, the.

Okay, we're pulling the bait away, mate.

So the plan was for one of the other divers to distract them way off to the side with the bait box, and then I would get out as silently as possible so they wouldn't notice me. That is insane.

Yay. That's so. Okay, go ahead. Open the door. Oh, crap. That was loud, dude. Holy crap. I've got to close this back up. Oh, jeez. Luke, I need help, man. Holy crap. Oh, my gosh. I think someone should tell Shaq he can do his own stunts from now on.

The main takeaway for me for this experience is that sharks have been on this planet longer than the dinosaurs or even trees have. So they've had 400 million years of evolution to develop these instincts that are rewarded for smelling fish blood. Humans and cows will be an extremely rare delicacy. So it makes sense that is not just hardwired into their brains. And so, with all my limbs intact and with my curiosity fully satiated, I will leave you with these profound words that, in my defense, might have been the drama. Mean, speaking as humans, we're always the predator and not really ever the prey. But this gave me a sense of what it's like to be a tuna fish.

It.