YouTuber investigates why sharks attack GoPros by swimming in shark-infested waters with a GoPro
He's joined for this perilous experiment by Stranger Things' Noah Schnapp
YouTubers will do anything to satiate the cravings of their ever-hungry god, Content. The latest example of this is former NASA engineer turned video-maker Mark Rober, who decided to test out why sharks seem to like attacking GoPro cameras by making a video where he dives into shark-infested waters to wave around a GoPro camera.
Rober is joined on this Shark Week-affiliated experiment by Noah Schnapp, the actor who plays one of Stranger Things’ most frequently monster-attacked character, Will Byers. The two of them head out to Bermudan waters churning with fins and break down exactly what they’re up to, explaining that many people believe sharks are especially attracted to the small electrical fields emitted by GoPro cameras.
Rather than test whether this is true in safe, not-particularly-exciting conditions, Rober, Schnapp, and shark expert/marine biologist Luke Tipple conduct an experiment that involves them swimming with the sharks. Rober holds a selfie stick with a mock GoPro while Tipple uses an identical set-up with the real thing, hoping that this difference will show whether the sharks just want to bite at any underwater object on a stick or if they are actually interested in something about the GoPro.
Nobody gets ripped apart and the results of this first dive are inconclusive, so the group heads off to different waters and Rober unveils a contraption with 21 GoPros strapped to it. Even with all these GoPros in front of them, the sharks didn’t seem to view the cameras as food. The myth, as Rober puts it, is busted. And he didn’t kill either himself or a TV star in the process of figuring it out.
That said, we think it might be safer for Rober to return to less dangerous video concepts, like the one where he created a squirrel obstacle course or blasted apart a watermelon with a modified Super Soaker. There are just fewer sharp marine predator teeth involved in those experiments, is all.
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