Oklahoma in the USA might be the last place in the world you’d expect to find someone doing research into shark resistant wetsuits for surfers and divers. However, there are good reasons why John Sundnes and Joe Christie, the two surfer/divers behind Ironskinn wetsuits, are conducting trials in the landlocked, mid-west state. To begin with, Oklahoma aquarium is home to the world’s largest collection of bull-sharks in captivity. Secondly, the Helmeric Research Centre (HRC) is just up the road from the aquarium. The HRC is an extension of Oklahoma State University, and is home to a faculty that specialises in materials science. If you want to stop rows of razor sharp teeth in their tracks then you need help from experts who understand how materials behave under stress. For the crew at the HRC, testing materials designed to nullify the danger posed by sharks was like the most exciting science project they’ve ever been assigned. “They were very keen to help work on this and develop it,” explains John via a video call from New Zealand, where he is based. “They’re (HRC) actually working on replicating these forces. So we’re building a bigger data set to come up with a material testing standard. Because many materials don’t cut it.”
Initially, John and Chris focused on the professional diving market. “People might say, ‘Who the hell are you guys to think you can make these shark resistant surf suits?’ offers John. “Well, okay, we’ve been making these shark resistant dive suits for professional divers for years now. And some of the best divers out there are wearing our suits – Guys from Shark Week have been using them. We’ve got commercial divers, you’ve got abalone divers and one of the guys, Tyrone Craig, was on the show Abalone Wars.” (Abalone Wars is a popular adventure-doc that has been running for five seasons and is available on a host of platforms).
While, the dive suits can afford to be a little heavier and make use of alloy plates, developing a user-friendly surf suit meant coming up with a soft product that was incredibly strong but also sufficiently light and flexible to ride waves in.
During testing, proposed wetsuit materials were wrapped around a plastic casing, representing a limb, which in turn had a bait jammed in the middle to entice the bull-sharks to take a solid shot at the floating object. As you can see from the footage below, they don’t’ just nibble at it. Once the bait had been hit with a meaningful bite it was hauled in to scrutinise the impact on the material and the hard plastic core it’s wrapped around. If the plastic core was untouched then it was an initial sign that the material had been effective and the bite never would have come into contact with a human limb. Closer examination of the test-material might have shown that one side was scored or marked by the teeth, but if you flipped it over, it was apparent that the teeth hadn’t come anywhere close to penetrating to the other side.
As John explains they also used a separate bait packed with load censors to test exclusively for the bite pressure exerted by a shark. “With load cells in between plates, the sharks will come and bite, and all that data is recorded back to a computer. You’re getting 33 readings a second. And it all just pulls up and you can measure the forces.” These readings help establish an industry standard for what kind of pressure a material should be able to withstand to be deemed ‘shark resistant’. John also admits he has personal reasons for being thorough with his testing.
“I’ve got two boys and they’re into ocean sports,” he explains. “I think, you know, if I’m gonna go look at a product that says it’s ‘Shark Resistant’, it better bloody well be reasonably shark resistant.”
Eventually John and Chris came up with a material that performed well under the extreme testing procedures. John was understandably reluctant to say exactly what the material was, but he likens it to Kevlar. However, he also explains that it’s not simply the material itself that works as a barrier against sharp teeth that can both pierce downwards and sheer sideways.
“It’s only by taking different materials and stacking them up that we started to defeat it because you get that little point. The point comes down with pressure and it’ll get between fibres and then those really sharp edges will cut fibres. So we have to use a bunch of layers that are stacked on top of one another in a very specific way to get past that.”
So far, the research in Oklahoma, combined with more open water testing with great whites off Stuart Island in New Zealand, has enabled Ironskinn to develop a pair of long-leg surf pants that John can confidently claim are shark resistant.
“We’ve gone through hundreds of materials and thousands of combinations to get it down to five mils thick. Yeah, we can make it thinner. But then we couldn’t say it’s shark resistant,” explains John.
Interestingly the testing demonstrated that different shark species have different bite techniques. While the great whites tended to sneak up and deliver one, almighty chomp, the bull sharks and the tigers liked to bite then shred from side-to side. “I think what’s kind of horrifying about the bull sharks is how they kind of don’t want to let go,” suggests John. “They get stuck into it. And then they’re happy to just keep going.” Fortunately the pants are engineered to be resistant to both kinds of bite motion.
So if the Iron Skinn pants can prevent a shark from puncturing your skin what are they like to surf in? John is the first to admit that developing something fully shark resistant means making some compromises with weight and mobility.
“Now the mobility is quite good and you can easily do like deep squats or, you know, bend your knee all the way back towards the back of your thigh. But we don’t envision that people would be wearing this in competition… There’s a realistic side of it. And we’re not up for telling everybody, ‘Oh, we’ve got this, you know, magic solution that feels like nothing at all’.”
John stresses that, like a pair of stiff jeans, the surf pants become increasingly flexible and user-friendly the more you use them and the team has worked hard to make the pants as functional as possible. They conducted extensive trials to maximise the mobility of the knee joint and he claims the wetsuit hits the scales at a little over three kg’s dripping wet. “One of the hardest things we’ve dealt with is the back of the knee, it was absolutely a pain in the butt to solve that… 47 different configurations to get the knee to feel comfortable.”
He and Chris have used them extensively in waves in New Zealand and Australia, and while he doesn’t expect a pro surfer to paddle out for a heat in a pair, he identifies a range of scenarios where the added protection might provide a little more peace of mind. “If I’m out after work and it’s twilight and I’m surfing somewhere more remote. You know, it’s a little bit of extra girth and a little bit of extra weight, but I’m probably going to have more peace of mind.”
Ironskinn also offers a 60-day money-back guarantee on the product. If you test it and decide that it’s not for you, then it can be readily returned. They are currently working through the manufacturing hurdles involved with developing a full-suit for surfers and swimmers. However, the pants are a good place to state if you intend to surf in sharky conditions. One of the biggest risks from shark attacks is a severing of the femoral artery in one of the legs. Once the artery is punctured then stemming the blood flow is incredibly difficult. The Ironskinn surf pants address that issue.
Hauling on a pair of shark resistant pants might feel like a big step for a lot of surfers. It’s at once an admission of your fears and a compromise on your surfing performance. However, there are no doubt scenarios where discretion is probably the better part of valour. If you are going to make the decision to wear some form of shark resistant suit then you want to know that what you’re pulling on is well worth the extra effort and has been subjected to the most rigorous testing. Shark suits are no place for cheap gimmicks. After talking to John there seems little doubt that the team at Ironskinn are sincere about their quest to make a wetsuit that offers meaningful protection and more peace of mind – both invaluable when all you want to worry about is catching a few waves.
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