Kayak Color and sharks...

[Fiskadoro]

In another thread someone asked me about my camouflaged kayak and how I thought it's color might relate to sharks, and I wrote a "novel" so I decided that I might as well make the post it's own thread.

Sorry in advance if anyone get's pissed off by this... it's just my honest opinions, take em or leave em.

So here's the yak and it's paint job...
Some may know that my Camo pattern is on there to make it less visible to seabass when pot hole'n b, but there is whole other reason, and that is the fact I put it on there to deter sharks.

So here's the basic ideas...

I used to design and build large shark trolling lures for Makos and T sharks. For a while I was even considering marketing them. I've put in a lot of time thinking about what attracts sharks and what does not.

I tried all kinds of color patterns for deep water shark jigs and by far the most effective were: Reds, Oranges, and Pinks. Followed by Yellows and Bright Lime greens, so sharks are attracted to those colors but that is not the only thing involved here.

I have fished sharks since I was a kid, everything from tigers, and 14ft hammers in the surf in Texas.... To Makos and 14ft+ Threshers here. Some people consider me some kind of an expert on them or Guru on them, which is kind of BS. I'm just a guy who's educated myself about them. I have seen and caught my share, read a shitload about them, I am friends with some true experts and basically do know a lot about them and their behavior, but I'll pass on the expert status.

My take is the Whites are here and it's just a matter of time before a Kayak fisherman get's killed by one.

Before anyone freaks out...Let's face it people die doing things all the time. I mean statistically your more likely to die of a heart attack kayaking then getting eaten by a white, but probabilities being what they are I'd say eventually it's going to happen to someone. My take is why not take steps to avoid it if you can, and for me personally...well I've killed so many sharks I can't help think that they'd love to get me if they could.

Call it poetic justice or just superstition but I've fished them for decades and seen so many sharks in the water over the years often in places you would not think they'd be, that it just makes me very wary of them. Not that it would ever keep me off the water.

Sharks are highly evolved creatures with one of the longest adaption periods recorded in fossil history. That makes them highly predictable on certain levels. Sharks are attracted to many things. One of them is their prey, and they usual find and attack prey in a predictable way.

Makos and Whites are ambush feeders.

I know more about makos so I'll start with them. Makos like to swim down on the thermocline in the open ocean and then come up and hit fish on the surface using their speed to clip off the tails of large fish like swords before the fish ever even see them. Then they let them bleed out and come back to feed on them.

Here's a great vid of a mako clopping a tail like this..




In a similar way whites hang deep watching for their prey on the surface and then they come up from below at speed and hit them hard using their jaw strength and huge teeth to deliver a crushing lethal blow before they ever see it coming. Once again they attack then wait with big prey just like Makos for their prey to bleed out and then come back and eat them.

Here's a vid of a white attack on a small seal but imagine how fast it was moving to get all that weight up into the air.



A White's favorite prey is an elephant seal, and they are not small like the pup above, they just happen to be about the size of a kayak. To a suspended hunting white thirty feet down in the water, a kayak silhouette on the surface must look a whole lot like an elephant seal. At that depth he can see you but you can't see him which is why they hunt that way but they can't see you all that clearly. So they are looking up for the dark silhouettes of their prey against the light blue background of the surface of the ocean. So Kayaks make a tempting target to them as they have the same basic silhouette or shadow in the water as a elephant seal.

Personally I think gray, dark gray, and dark green kayaks must look a lot like a elephant seal to a white. So I'd stay away from those colors from a match the hatch perspective. I think dark kayaks are the most likely to trigger a crushing attack from down deep, the classic white feeding behavior. Especially early in the morning or late in the evening, in turbid water or near the surf zone where visibly is reduced.

You might say wait a minute you said they like bright colors, and I did say that but what I did not tell you is that for makos the best colors for surface jigs not diving jigs are not bright colors but dark colors purple, black and dark green. The reason being that these colors make the sharpest silhouette or cast a better shadow and they are the easiest for makos that are hanging deep looking up for prey on the surface to see, and that feeding behavior is duplicated by white sharks.

So contrary to popular belief I think dark colors are more likely to trigger an aggressive strike response from a deep hunting white.

I'll call that the match the hatch factor.

That said: I don't think I would ever buy red yellow or orange kayak, but that is because of another behavior.

I'll call this the Yum Yum yellow factor.

Like I said sharks are attracted by bright colors, and though bright colors may not be as likely to trigger a hunting type of attack from a deep shark they are far more likely to trigger investigative behavior or scavenging behavior where a shark that is already swimming near the surface comes up and chews on your yak, just to see if it's something edible. Sharks have prey they hunt but they are oportunistic and will eat other things like dead whales that they do not hunt down.

Think about this a minute a shark looking up sees your yak against a whiteish light blue back ground of water and sky, but a shark that sees you from the side sees your yak against a green or dark blue background.

With my mako lures: the lures that dived deep got bit best if they were bright colors because the sharks were seeing them from the side not from underneath them.

Ultimately this is all about visibility, what get's seen due to high contrast is the most likely thing to get attacked or probed for scavange.

I'd say the worst case scenario is red because it is dark enough to trigger a hunting response from sharks that are deep, but also warm enough to trigger an investigative response from sharks swimming near the surface. That's why I would not own a red kayak for fishing in the ocean.

Just my take, but that is my take.

So how do you get around all this or whats the perfect color or color pattern for fishing in sharky waters. Well you only have to look at the sharks themselves to see what works. A mako is white underneath and then blue on the sides.



Millions of years of evolution has given them coloring that reduces contrast when viewed from the top side or bottom. We have used the exact same color pattern ideas for military aircraft to reduce their visibility to enemy aircraft.


Makos Threshers, whites even blue sharks all have white bellies and variations of blue on their sides.

So what would be the safest color for a fishing kayak when it comes to sharks? Well a white kayak would be the least likely to get attacked from below in a feeding type attack, and a blue one would be safest when it comes to sharks that are not hunting but swimming near the surface. If you were going to go with a solid color I'd say light blue, but ideally the best color pattern as it relates to shark safety would be a blue sided white bottomed kayak.

The topsides of course could be any color at all, as the sharks can't see you from above, so I'd say white or a bright color would be ideal for the top.

My take is that kayaking is still in it's infancy. When plastic kayaks first started being made the colors were a gimmick to give people choice, and bright colors are easier for people to see on the water if the lost their yak, or got in trouble. That said the colors we see now are not going to be around for ever. It's not like you see green red or orange boats out there.

Eventually people are going to realize that some color choices might be safer then others when it comes to sharks. I think that is just a given. I think the first time you see someone get eaten out there in a red kayak you're going to see a lot of manufactures cut back on their production of red kayaks. Supply and demand, eventually people are going to quit buying them.

I mean the writing is already on the wall for people that are willing to look at it.

Anyone else notice a pattern here?








As to my color choice.... Well I hate blue and white yaks are harder to find. I also like the idea of being seen in the water since I don't want to get run over, and lime green kayaks show up really well in low light conditions like in the morning when I'm paddling out of a harbor.. So I figured Lime green was the least of those bright color evils, but I would of honestly bought I white one if I had seen one in the same price range.

When Josh and I started talking about seabass, kayak color, and kelp I decided to paint my yak a shark friendly light blue and then camo it with a kelp frond pattern. In theory this makes my yak harder to see to seabass and since camo patterns break up the silhouette to the eye, and the whole issue with sharks is the silhouette and it's contrast to the background that camo over light blue should be pretty safe as far as sharks go.

That said I left the topsides bright green because I don't want to get run over by a boat, which in my opinion is a bigger issue then white sharks.

So there you have my big shark kayak color theory.

Jim