Malachi McKenna has been wrestling with bits of plastic on his stall at the British Invention Show, while attempting to demonstrate his hydroponic gardening system. "Not only because he was so intelligent, but also because he was so passionate I really think Troy would have made him smile.". If that's not a testament to sharks avoiding us, I don't know what is."Cousteau is already developing new underwater projects. But he wishes his famous grandfather had lived long enough to see his shark submarine."He was a fascinating individual," Cousteau says. He hopes that it will help people to understand great white sharks better and help to dispel some of the myths that surround them."For film-makers to deceive the public into thinking that great white sharks always attack everything is appalling," he says. "The reason they have been able to live pretty much unchanged for 400 million years is that they are perfectly adapted to their environment and they are not stupid.
In certain places - California, South Africa, Australia, Florida - there happen to be areas that are hot spots for where sharks live, and that are also areas where lots of people go surfing, water-skiing and diving. You have millions of people in those waters, and you have millions of sharks in those waters, and you have, worldwide, 70 to 80 incidents a year. "It takes away their element of surprise and makes them vulnerable."Every day, for the next week, Cousteau took to the water in Troy and was satisfied that all the hard work had been worth it."We were definitely able to capture shark behaviour that has not been possible to see in the past," he says.He recently finished editing the resulting documentary, Mind of a Demon. I thought this may be a weird, far-out idea, but it actually works.''Only once did Cousteau feel he was in any danger - when one great white charged at Troy but veered off at the last second "They definitely don't like being looked at," he says. "Sharks respect each other's space, but I have no idea how to respect a great white's space, so sometimes I would get close and they would just swim away.
But then sometimes I would see one and notice that it was starting to swim with me."Cousteau, who was often surrounded by as many as five great whites, was moved by the experience. "To be underwater among these sharks is an enormously humbling experience They're like 747s underwater. The largest one I saw was nearly 18ft long, but they are so graceful and so deceivingly calm, and very sure of themselves."After a while, Cousteau became convinced that the sharks believed that Troy was one of their own "One great white did gape and gill puff at Troy," he says "It was trying to communicate with Troy. After searching for a suitable area to launch, Cousteau donned his scuba gear, slid backwards into Troy, sealed the head and was lowered into an ocean full of great whites.Initially, the sharks were wary of the mechanical interloper. "In the beginning, it was hard to get the sharks to come close to Troy," Cousteau says.
