Some people are into swimming with Great White sharks (how bored with life do you have to be?). Fabian Cousteau, the legendary Jacques’ grandson, is into swimming in them. Now, I guess that some of the people that swim with them end up in them, but that’s not what Fabian had in mind. He wanted to be the shark, so naturally he contacted the one place where you can be anything you want to be: Hollywood. And he asked famed animatronics guru Eddie Paul to build him a life-like mechanical Great White shark that he could dive in. And thirty years after the lame, obviously fake “Bruce” which ate Robert Shaw in Steven Spielberg’s breakout movie, Paul came up with a pretty damn good shark (he also built a mechanical shark for Fabian’s father, which worked fine until another Great White ripped its head off). If you want all the gory technical details (“The shark’s skeletal frame consists of a Makrolon polycarbonate spine and stainless steel ribs.”), you can check out this feature in Design News. But all you really need to know is that this guy is self-propelled by compressed air, is nicknamed “Troy,” and has three cameras to record the fishy action. Fabian has already taken it for a few rides off Baja, and while he says the other Great Whites seem to accept it is some sort of shark they apparently treat it like a “retarded cousin from Australia.” Using Troy to film real sharks in action is innovative and cool, but I have to ask whether this is really the best use for him. I mean, think of all the trouble you could make off the coast of Florida. Hell, you could blackmail the tourist industry. Even better you could have CNN in certified shark frenzy for a month (and maybe even get them to cut back to just 10 hours a day of Michael Jackson)…
Fabian And Troy Swim With The Fishes: “Uh-oh. That guy behind us is looking a little amorous. Oh well. I wanted unusual footage and I guess I’m about to get it…”
(Thanks to TWC reader Luis Vieira for the original tip)
Skip to content
The Earthist Chronicles 