Shark Skin
The shark
skin of the Great White shark in Cape Town consists of a large number of dermal
denticles also called placoid scales. When cage diving in Cape Town you
will get an idea of this for yourself. If you were to stroke the shark from
head to dorsal fin, you wouldn’t notice any resistance. The other way round
however, you would feel the rough surface of its skin. At this point we would
like to mention that it is at no time permitted to touch the sharks during
shark cage diving as it is far too dangerous for inexperienced hobby divers.
Cage Diving in Cape Town – South Africa Great White Sharks – Research
The placoid
scales offer the shark protection from injuries and reduce drag, ensuring the
shark is streamlined. The skin consists of tiny microscopic teeth which
immensely minimise fractional resistance in the water. The Great White Shark is
thus able to remain energy efficient while swimming, reaching top speeds of up
to 60km/h when hunting.
A Great
White loses approximately 20 000 of these placoid scales per year. In the
same way that its teeth regrow, so do the scales replace themselves and grow
larger each year.
Research
makes use of specific characteristics of land and water animals, and implements
these studies in the development of new products. Diving suits have already
been developed using the same concept as sharkskin.
Artificial skin is even used on racing boats, yet was eventually banned due to the
enormous competitive advantage it provided.
Researchers
are currently busy with the development of artificial skin for ship
hulls. These will replace several coats of paint that are harmful to the
environment. Another plus is that the artificial skin has no contact surface
for barnacles or mussels.
For aviation
and space travel they are currently developing an artificial shark skin for
various aircraft wings. This will save large amounts of kerosene, especially on
long haul flights, and will increase the overall airspeed. Researchers are
struggling, however, with aircraft maintenance, but further tests on a new
shark foil are in progress.
There are
also research teams working on a shark skin coating that could bring about a
major breakthrough and reduce annual fuel consumption by approximately 4.5
million tons per year worldwide. This special skin coating could also be
of great use in wind power plants and could also be applied to formula 1 racing
cars!
Cape Town
and its suburbs offer fantastic beaches for many surfers and a sharkskin is
being developed for surfboard applications which are sure to increase speed.
In earlier
years skin was used in Japan for sword handles. Dried and tanned, this
versatile skin was also used as an abrasive for sanding purposes. Even today in
Japan, the popular wasabi root (very hot sushi mustard) is still traditionally
grated with a grater made of sharkskin (also called shark leather).
Should you
be interested in shark cage diving in Gansbaai, we offer daily tours from Cape
Town to the kingdom of the ocean’s largest predator.
We look
forward to hearing from you
Your Cape Town Cage Diving Team