 |
Photo courtesy John R. Williams
Professor Williams and students from the Sharklab in the water observing sharks at the Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas. |
As a young boy growing up in Western Australia, chemistry professor John R. Williams developed what has become a lifelong fascination with sharks.
“I can always remember being on the beach in Perth and seeing some weekend fisherman go by carrying a rifle,” Williams recalled. “I thought to myself, ‘That’s unusual because you don’t shoot fish.’ So I went over and asked one of the guys why he needed a rifle and his comment was, ‘Son, you never want to be in a boat with a live shark. They will take a chunk out of your arm or leg.’
“Every summer weekend when I was growing up, small planes would patrol up and down the coast looking for sharks,” he added. “Pilots could see the shark's black outline against the light sandy bottom from the air. The pilots would relay the information to the lifeguards on the beach who would sound the siren warning swimmers to get out of the water. The lifeguards would row out in boats and scare the sharks away.”
That childhood experience has developed into a mission to try and prevent deadly shark attacks and confine them to movies such as Jaws. For the past 10 years, Williams has had an active research program in which he uses derivatives of cholesterol, the most common animal steroid, to make a class of compounds called mosesins and pavoninins that have been known to act as shark repellents. [more] |
