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Sharks Love Heavy Metal, Especially AC/DC

Hell yeah they do.

As anyone who has watched bits of Shark Week can tell you, sharks are amazingly powerful, nuanced sea creatures. Thick-skinned with cartilage skeletons, they posses exquisite senses, including a special organ called ampullae of Lorenzini, which allows it to “feel” the electrical field coming from it’s pray.

As anyone who has watched the trailer for “Soul Surfer” can tell you, at the end of the day, a hungry shark is essentially a murderous sea monster.

But who could have known the sharp-toothed behemoths were also such groupies for AC/DC?

According to Australian Geographic tour boat guide Matt Waller was exploring techniques to attract sharks to his boat when he stumbled upon one particularly badass method.

Traditionally, guides bait sharks with fish guts, but Waller heard that dive operators on Guadalupe Island had started using music to lure the giant creatures.

After experimenting with a few inferior bands, Waller found that AC/DC, particularly the songs “Shook Me All Night Long” and “Back in Black,” attracts sharks and appears to lull them into a happy stupor.

Australian Geographic reports:

“Using underwater speakers attached to diving cages, they pumped Australian rock hits through the water. Most of Matt’s tunes had no effect, but when the great whites heard the AC/DC songs, they swam up and rubbed their faces against the source of the music.”

What a bunch of hussies.

I think the two takeaways here are, a.) that sharks are even cooler than we thought, and b.) moshing with sharks could be a new extreme sport. Metal fans won’t crush their skulls on a shark’s cartilage body, though they do risk losing a limb. And it’s a fair match, as the sharks risk accidentally getting punched in the nose.

  1. June 09, 2011 at 7:46 pm, kyanna said:

    how do i love this story let me count the ways…

    Reply

  2. June 10, 2011 at 2:55 pm, Christine Conte said:

    Sharks love heavy metal and hate proofreaders. “It’s pray” should be “its prey.”

    Reply

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