Discovery Channel’s Jeff Kurr tells FFJ about his latest creation, the WASP, a one-man walking aluminum cage, for “Shark Week”

August 2014 - Imagine diving into the ocean and suddenly being surrounded by a school of great white sharks, the only thing keeping you from the 4,000-lb. carnivores is an aluminum cage. For Jeff Kurr, the world’s most feared sea creature no longer signals extreme danger but rather a fascination and sense of respect.

His walking cage has gained Kurr much attention, being one of the few daring divers to explore incredible depths on the Discovery channel’s “Shark Week.” FFJournal had a chance to catch up with Kurr, who shared his latest invention, the water armor shark protection (WASP), a lightweight, mobile shark cage designed to glide easily along the ocean floor.

Kurr’s adventurous career placed him in the ocean off New Zealand in search of some of the biggest great white sharks. That trip inspired him to create the WASP. “I got the idea for the WASP when I was in New Zealand last year filming a show for Shark Week,” says Kurr. 

“We were in these aluminum cages at the surface where we had our fair share of great white sharks surrounding the cages, bumping into the cages, coming really close to us, but I kept looking down and I could see a lot of interesting shark activity going on at the bottom and I asked the boat captain, ‘How do you get down to the bottom?’”

Kurr soon began working on a design for a shark cage capable of protecting divers from the great whites, 50 ft. below the surface. Kurr designed the WASP and had a New Zealand fabricator construct the cage to match his vision. 

Building the WASP

The WASP stands 6 ft. tall and 3 ft. in diameter. It was cut from 16.4 ft. aluminum alloy tube and formed to hold one diver. The WASP box section was then formed into 3.3 ft. diameter hoops that were then painted yellow and black. 

Kurr incorporated Lexan to create a transparent window that surrounds the aluminum armor, creating the illusion that the diver is floating unprotected. For advanced divers, there is also a latch that—depending on the behavior of the shark—opens to allow the diver to physically interact with the sharks and capture photos without the aluminum bar blocking the camera’s viewfinder. 

“From the rough sketches to the finished product, there was a lot of fine tuning, testing and retesting, which resulted in a cage that maintained its integrity under direct contact from great white sharks,” explains the WASP’s fabricator. 

However, Kurr notes that no cage is completely shark proof; rather it’s just a bluff. “A great white shark can smash any cage to pieces if it really wanted to but these sharks are cautious by nature. So, they’ll probably knock [the WASP] around and test it, mainly because they are curious about this strange craft in their environment.” 

Great white sharks have electroreception, an ability to pick up small electrical fields given off by metal. “It tastes the metal and immediately has an averse reaction and doesn’t continue to bite,” he adds. Again, this doesn’t deter the giant creatures from toying with the WASP and its occupant. 

Kurr describes an instance when two sharks approached the WASP, with an expert diver inside, and decided to use the cage as a volleyball, knocking it flat on the ocean floor four or five times before losing interest.

“Any inexperienced diver would have panicked in a situation like that but we built a self-riding system, or a buoyancy system, in the WASP. A chamber on the top of WASP can be filled with air, lifting the WASP back up.” 

Overall, the WASP has succeeded in the field, allowing divers to capture samples of rare sea creatures thriving at the bottom of the ocean, says Kurr. “You rarely see great whites cruising along the bottom and that’s what I wanted to capture. That’s what made our footage so amazing and unique. You see [the sharks cruising] right along the bottom and it’s really eerie and phenomenal looking.” 

Kurr’s knowledge of shark safety comes from 24 years of exploring the deep seas, carefully learning the behaviors of great white sharks and going to some of the coolest places in the world in search of them. He plans to continue learning about the great white shark and educate others about the lord of the sharks.

Catch more of Jeff Kurr and the WASP on “Shark Week,” beginning Sunday, Aug. 10, on the Discovery Channel. FFJ

Photos courtesy of Discovery Channel