Researchers have found that inexpensive magnets can reduce the number of sharks caught in fish traps and increases the amount of fish caught.
University of Newcastle marine ecologist Vincent Raoult said researchers experimented with small magnets on fish traps to create an electromagnetic field over trap entry points, with the hope of deterring sharks.
“Across the summer we deployed nearly a thousand traps and found significant effects from those magnets, which reduced the total catch of the sharks by about 30 per cent, which is great for that fishery," he said
"But also we found interestingly that because [the magnets] reduced the amount of sharks, those traps with magnets also had about 30 per cent more fish in them.”