FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

SWIMMING WITH THE SHARKS:  JOIN A GREAT WHITE IN AN OLYMPIC-SIZED POOL
AT LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY TOMORROW

Fabien Cousteau Collaborates With Eddie Paul, The Engineer Who Designed The Animatronic Model Of E.T., To Build A Submarine That Looks And Feels Like A Great White Shark.  The Shark Will Be Put To The Test Tomorrow At LMU’s Burns Recreation Center.

 January 30, 2004 -- Eddie Paul will be swimming inside the belly of a shark this weekend at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles as he tests a 14-foot wet sub that looks disconcertingly like a great white.  The shark-look-alike will be tested for buoyancy in the university’s swimming pool on Saturday, January 31, beginning at 12:30 p.m., as a crew from the Discovery Channel films a segment for its upcoming Shark Week in September.  The test will set a new world record – the man-made shark will be the first to ever swim under its own power.

Following the buoyancy test, Paul and Fabien Cousteau, whose grandfather was famed ocean adventurer Jacques Cousteau, will man the look-alike in the ocean with a group of genuine sharks to see if the sub can pass for the real thing. 

By disguising themselves as one of them, Paul and Cousteau are hoping to show a view of shark behavior never before seen.  While Cousteau’s father collaborated with Paul in 1989 on a cruder version of the shark sub to see how great whites off Southern Australia would respond to a look-alike, that experiment was unmanned.  During that experiment, sharks tolerated the sub until it exhibited distressed behavior, listing to one side, and then tore the sub apart.  Highly aware of the dangers of manning the sub, both Paul and Cousteau are confident that the new model will be far more convincing.

The 14-foot synthetic shark has a steel skeleton with rubber skin, and includes a one-man chamber in which Paul or Cousteau can control the sub’s movements and observe the real great whites.  It has been carefully crafted to look, move, and feel just like the real thing.  The design is a collaboration between Cousteau and Paul (of Eddie Paul Industries, Inc.), a design engineer and inventor who created the animatronic model of E.T.

Media are invited to attend the event, and should enter the LMU campus at the LMU Drive entrance, just off of Lincoln Blvd. (two blocks south of the Lincoln Blvd. and Jefferson intersection) and inquire at the guard gate for further directions. 

For more information, call 310.338.2389.

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