Sharks: Predators of the Deep (2024) Movie Script
1
The Earth's oceans.
With boundless depths
and shadowy creatures,
they are a realm of both fear and mystery.
Deep below the surface
dwell some of the most remarkable species.
One particular type of fish
continues to leave the world in awe,
yet remains heavily misunderstood.
Eaten or hunted merely for sport,
humans have largely abandoned a species
that is far more complex
than the bloodthirsty predators
we've been led to believe.
Known globally as sharks,
these fish deserve a more
nuanced understanding.
With sensationalized stories,
illegal fishing,
and the oceans changing
at a record-breaking rate,
the future of sharks is now
more threatened than ever.
Over numerous decades,
sharks have become evil caricatures.
Depicted as mindlessly
ferocious and bloodthirsty,
the media has not shied away
from feeding into the stereotypes
surrounding the species.
The 1975 film "Jaws,"
directed by Steven Spielberg,
was by all accounts a
technical and narrative marvel.
The film featured a police chief,
a marine biologist, and
a local shark hunter
who sought to find and
kill a great white shark
which had fatally attacked
some swimmers prior.
Get everybody out!
Upon release,
the public perception on sharks
had changed for the worse.
In a heartbeat, the fish was demonized.
A shark was now known as
a bloodthirsty creature
which only seeks to kill,
the devil reincarnated.
What came next was
devastating to shark life.
Although the fear of
sharks predates the film,
the impact "Jaws" had on the human psyche
led to a term being
called the "Jaws" effect.
More films and TV shows would follow,
always depicting sharks
in a negative light
and steadily strengthening the
fear people have of the fish.
Films such as "The Shallows" and "The Meg"
are some of the many
which have fallen victim
to the "Jaws" effect.
In an effort to inform the
misconceptions about sharks,
the series "Shark Week" was established
to promote shark conservation.
However, the hatred of this
fish had become global.
Shark attacks would be pushed
to the media forefront,
when in reality these
attacks were extremely scarce
and on many occasions provoked.
So for most people,
there is, yes, just fear.
It's a sort of one-dimensional
view of the shark.
Increasingly in recent years,
and I'm really, really
thrilled about this,
the shark is being seen as the victim
rather than the threat.
People are beginning to realize
that sharks are being way overfished.
For many, many, many years,
their fins were sliced off to
end up in bowls of fin soup.
And to give you an idea of this,
I was doing some some vox
pops down in the street
in Richmond about 12 years ago
with a presenter called
Miranda Krestovnikoff,
and we were trying to
find people in the street
to give us the stereotype answer
of what sharks meant to them.
We wanted shock, horror, fear.
It was really a struggle.
We were asking people what
they thought about sharks
and they were saying,
"Oh, you must understand,
you know, sharks are being overfished,
sharks are being killed.
The real threat is not sharks to humans.
It's humans to sharks."
Which was great news.
It was fantastic, 'cause our
message was getting across.
I would say the shark will always struggle
to lose its image of fear, of attack.
It's just the word.
In parts of China,
Taiwan, and Southeast Asia,
shark fin soup has been a
delicacy since the 1300s.
The process of finning
involved capturing the fish,
slicing off the shark's fin,
and dumping the rest of
the still-living body
back into the ocean.
The fins themselves
became high-value targets
due to their monetary and cultural value.
Shark finning was banned in Europe in 2003
following a UK campaign
to conserve the frighteningly
endangered species.
The finning process is also outlawed
in all high sea tuna fisheries
within Eastern countries such as China,
although shark fins still
continue to be collected
and exported throughout
many different countries.
Sharks have a very
low reproduction rate,
so will commonly produce very few pups.
A great white shark, for example,
typically might produce between three,
maybe 7, 8, 9, maximum maybe 10 pups,
and this doesn't happen very often.
I think the gestation
period for a white shark
is about eight or nine months.
So low production rates,
so very, very, very susceptible
to being overfished.
So you start taking too
many of these animals out
and they don't sexually mature
until I think females are about,
I think females are about
14, males are about 12.
So very difficult for shark populations
to take a lot of fishing pressure.
And certainly through the '90s,
the early part of this century,
when shark fins were being harvested
at an absolutely obscene rate,
you know, not a million, not two million,
tens of millions of fins a
year just being sliced off
to end up in bowls of,
frankly, rather tasteless soup.
And the reason that sort
of started happening
was because of the huge growth
in the Chinese population
that could afford the luxuries.
So suddenly it wasn't just, you know,
the communist politburo
or the top guys who
could afford this stuff;
it was the middle class who
suddenly had a lot of money,
so the whole market went berserk.
And shark's fin soup
went from being something
that people dreamt about
to something that people
served at their weddings
and all sorts of social events.
It was a little bit of sort
of a mark of having made it.
You know, instead of serving caviar
which you might do in this society here,
serve shark fin soup.
And so enormous pressure on sharks.
Sharks were harvested,
tens of millions, hundreds of millions,
and it really does show.
I mean, I've visited
various places in the world
where there are no sharks.
Liz Downey,
maritime expert at the London Aquarium,
says sharks are being slaughtered so fast
soon there won't be any left to fish.
At the moment, the
trade is so unsustainable
that it will end up that
we will no longer have
a fishing trade for sharks if we carry on,
and it may have more
devastating effects than that
in actually resulting in
extinction of some species.
It is the shark's fin,
the mere sight of which
is enough to cause terror,
that threatens to be its downfall.
A trip down London's Chinatown
quickly shows the reason why.
Across the world, particularly
in Asian communities,
there's an insatiable
appetite for shark's fin soup
and other traditional recipes
made from the fin of the killer fish.
Environmentalists say we
should care about the shark
because it does a good job
feeding on weak and sick fish,
maintaining nature's
balance in the oceans.
They insist its evil reputation
is largely undeserved.
Since the 1970s,
the shark population saw
a decline like no other.
By 2024, over 71% of
biomass has been overfished.
Each year, over 100
million sharks are killed.
According to Nat Geo,
there has been a 79% drop
in the great white family
and 80% drop in thresher sharks
and a 99% drop in bull
sharks, dusky sharks,
smooth hammerheads, and porbeagle sharks.
I grew up in the in the Gulf,
in Kuwait and Bahrain
and places like that,
and sharks were in our lives all the time.
I then led about six shark
expeditions to the Gulf
looking for sharks and we chummed,
so we put stuff in the
water to attract sharks
for over 400 hours
and we only had one large predatory shark.
One.
We found lots of dead
sharks in the markets.
So we were able to study our sharks,
and from a scientific perspective,
the thing worked in that respect,
but that just shows you the
extraordinary rate of depletion
in that particular piece of water.
'Cause when I was a kid
growing up in the Gulf,
sharks were there literally all the time.
It's a treat to see a shark
and it's almost unheard
of now to see a big shark.
You're normally seeing small blacktips
and small reef sharks
and things like that.
So all over the world, I'm
afraid, massively depleted.
And with a species like
the great white shark,
we don't have any idea how many there are.
They're probably much more depleted
even than something like lions.
You read figures with the white shark
of between 3,500 and 5,000
animals in the whole planet.
I mean, that's frightening stuff.
Of course, they don't breathe air
like sort of dolphins, whales
and this, that, and the other,
so more difficult to count.
I mean, more difficult to
get an idea of populations,
but we do know the population
is massively depleted.
Sharks are now going extinct
at an alarming rate.
After the release of "Jaws,"
more fishermen became obsessed
over showing their ability
to kill the species.
By taking a small boat out onto the water
or simply fishing from the shore,
catching sharks as large as 500 pounds
was possible with a
reasonably-sized rod and reel.
Alongside people fishing on their own,
people began to sponsor tournaments
to initiate organized
shark fishing for prizes.
The death of a shark was celebrated.
How did the great white shark
become one of the world's
most dominant predators?
The story starts over
380 million years ago
during what was known
as the Devonian Period.
The first shark species
was known the Cladoselache,
although it has also speculated
that this was a type of chimaera
due to its anatomy
consisting of cartilage.
I guess for many, many, many years,
I was really into sharks.
What I wanted to do was
basically save sharks.
I became aware in the 1980s
of the incredible threat
the world shark populations were facing,
mainly due to finning and overfishing.
So for 30-odd years I was
sort of a shark crusader.
When I was eight years
old, I was sent out from UK
where I was at prep school,
boarding school, to Kuwait,
and all I wanted to do was go swimming.
'Cause it was Easter and
it was Easter time here,
so not warm, but really
warm in Kuwait in the Gulf.
And I got there
and my mother said no
swimming outside our house
because there had been a shark attack.
I mean, how exciting is
that to an eight-year-old?
So I was really disappointed
I couldn't go swimming
and I spent virtually the
whole of that Easter holiday
sitting on the garden wall
waiting for a fin to go like that
and hoping there would
be someone in the water.
That's pretty bizarre,
but it's kind of the way
small boys are, you know?
It never happened.
So I was literally hooked
on sharks, and still am.
Though sharks
do not possess bones,
they can still fossilize,
resulting in the spectacular condition
of their skeletons and teeth
which remain in museums today.
As sharks age, calcium salts are deposited
into their skeletal
cartilage to strengthen them.
The jaws of a shark are so solid
one might confuse them for bone.
The skeletal structure allows
the shark to remain light
and their large livers are
filled with low-density oils,
which allows them to keep
buoyant in the ocean.
The curious thing about sharks
is that although they've
evolved massively in some ways,
they're a perfectly evolved animal,
which is why they've survived.
They are an incredible animal
in the sense that they're perfect.
You know, we've got our senses,
touch, smell, taste, et cetera.
They've got our senses plus one.
And if you think about them
swimming through the water,
they look like a fighter plane.
So they look like the
wings out there, you know,
and the tail wing up there,
and they're this thing and
they're covered in little teeth.
The body's covered in little
teeth called dermal denticles.
This means they've got very,
very, very little resistance
going through the water.
They can swim, you know, effortlessly.
If you watch them,
it's just a very chilled-out thing
until something makes 'em
do something different.
Traditionally,
if one was to determine
the age of a shark,
their vertebrae would need to be examined.
The vertebrae contains pairs
of translucent and opaque bands
which can be counted
like the rings of a tree.
Scientists have discovered
the method may be inaccurate
due to the varying nature of
the shark's size and species.
This inaccuracy led to a new
study on deposition rate,
indicating the quantity of bands produced
are in accordance with each
species and size class.
By validating the deposition rate,
the age of a shark be
calculated with more accuracy.
During the Devonian Period,
the ocean was swarming
with ancient marine animals
such as ammonoids, an
extinct form of mollusk.
The trilobites,
an ancient ancestor of
crabs known as arthropods,
were steadily declining,
likely due to their inefficient anatomy.
Abundant fossil remains
show that the trilobites
had segmented bodies
and simple jointed appendages
similar to modern crustaceans.
It was clear to see
that the new age of marine
life was on the horizon.
Species were evolving to
ensure their survival.
Sharks in particular would find themselves
in a very dominant position.
Towards the end of the Devonian Period
came an extinction event so devastating
that it had wiped out 75%
of the Earth's species.
Global temperatures had
reached a height so severe
that the mixing rate of the oceans
had altered between the
surface and lower layers.
The bottom waters experienced
a low reoxygenation rate,
leading to the death
of many ocean species.
We've been here five minutes,
200,000 years actually,
and the way we're going,
we're gonna be very lucky to
be here another few hundred,
let alone 100,00.
So the sharks have been here forever
and we're just a teeny little weeny blip,
and I suspect they'll
be here when we're gone.
The
Carboniferous Period had begun
and is now widely known to
be the golden age for sharks.
The golden age not only set sharks
as dominant predators in the ocean,
but it also gave birth to
many variants of shark.
The Stethacanthus is one
of the stranger types
to roam the sea.
Evolving from the chimaera lineage,
this particular shark had developed
a distinctive anvil-shaped
fin on its back.
By the end of the golden age,
the seas were swarming
in a presumed 45 different shark families.
From the harsh temperature change
during the Permian-Triassic Period
to the alleged meteorite
which killed the dinosaurs
in the Jurassic period,
it is clear that sharks
have stood the test of time.
The shark species have
miraculously survived
five major extinction events.
Although a contributing factor,
this wasn't just due
to the sheer hardiness
and durability of the fish.
Sharks are malleable.
Their ability to survive
lies in their exploitation
of different parts of the water column,
from the shallow waters
to the deep dark oceans and even rivers.
Their diet is also vast.
Sharks will feed on something
as small as plankton
to prey as large as whales.
Their diversity has also
played a massive part.
Whilst many species of
shark had gone extinct,
such as the Stethacanthus
and the notorious megalodon,
many have evolved to survive,
requiring far less food in
order to sustain themselves,
unlike their giant ancestors.
Megalodon.
So 15 meters worth of fish
weighing up to 10
elephants worth, 50 tons,
and a mouth two meters wide.
I mean, it's a good job this
guy isn't around, it really is.
And teeth about 20 centimeters.
The white shark is kind
of like a mini megalodon.
Science thinks that white sharks
are descended from the same
sort of branch of ancestry.
But yeah, what a fish that was.
You can actually buy fossil teeth.
Probably big ones would be
about 20 meters, top to bottom.
Big fish, big teeth.
To be avoided.
I don't like to think of things extinct,
but I'm kind of glad
they're extinct actually.
The anatomy
of a shark naturally varies
depending on the biology
of their predecessors.
The hammerhead shark, for instance,
one of the youngest
families in our ocean today,
is estimated to have evolved
from a carcharhinid ancestor,
also known as a requiem shark.
The unusual shape of its head
is an amazing piece of anatomy,
built to maximize the fish's ability
to find its favorite meal, stingrays.
The great white shark, simply
known as a white shark,
has a remarkable anatomy.
Their species are classically
shaped with a pointed snout,
a triangular dorsal fin,
and a crescent-shaped caudal fin.
Each white shark is unique
and identifiable by the
color of their flanks,
ranging from very pale
undersides to a grayish black.
This also allows them to
view their prey from above,
disguising themselves with the pale sky.
The nostrils of the white shark
are on the underside of the snout
and lead to an organ
called the olfactory bulb.
The white shark is reported to possess
the largest olfactory
bulb of any shark species.
This is likely the cause
of many exaggerated rumors
regarding the great
white's sense of smell.
Whilst their scent is incredible,
sharks cannot smell a drop
of blood from a mile away
as many have proclaimed.
Scents travel to the great white
as they do to any living
being, through particles,
in this case carried by the ocean current.
The great white shark is
a temperate seas animal,
so it's really, really widespread.
It can take anything,
I believe from one
degree it's been clocked,
going down to one degree,
but normally five or six
degrees to about 25 degrees,
which means a vast band
of the world's oceans.
If you want to go and
see a great white shark,
then South Africa was a good place
until they went to war with orcas.
South Australia's a good place.
New Zealand's a good place.
California's a good place.
New England's a good place.
Anywhere in that sort of temperate band
of oceans around the world.
And I would say to
anybody, don't be worried.
You know, go and see a great white shark.
It's gonna be an experience
that's gonna blow you away.
I was working long time
ago on basking sharks
with an American photographer,
very famous one at the
time called Jeff Rotman.
And Jeff said, "Richard,
the first time you see a
white shark underwater,
it blows your away, it's indescribable."
About three years later I was in the water
in a cage in South Africa
and my first white shark swum up to me,
right, right, right up to the cage,
reasonable-sized animal,
probably about four meters.
And Jeff was right.
There aren't any words,
there's absolutely nothing
to describe what you feel
when that amazing creature
is just sort of, you know,
just coming up to say hello.
In those days, this is
a few years ago now,
we weren't just in cages.
I mean, you know, it was
a bit get the T-shirt,
get the tattoo, go outside the cage,
which was actually a
bit stupid and bonkers.
We all decided to go free diving anyway.
You're in a cage and this
thing comes up to you.
In a way, the thing that worried me most,
'cause I was leading a
team out there to do that,
was the very fact that
it wasn't frightening.
It was kind of spellbinding.
It was extraordinary.
It was an amazing experience
and you almost wanted to reach
out, and some people did.
And as the shark went by,
you almost wanted to stroke it.
Now, that may sound absolutely bonkers,
but it's true and people were.
And I could see from up on the deck
the guys looking down,
and one guy had his breather
taken out of his mouth
because he had done that
and they wanted him up there
to tell him off pretty quickly,
'cause that is bonkers.
You know, start sticking
bits of your body outside,
you're asking for trouble.
But you've got this incredible animal,
you're inches away if you're lucky,
and there's no feeling of aggression.
There really is no feeling of threat.
There's just a feeling of total awe.
The great white shark
is this sort of extraordinary
fighter aircraft
swimming through the water at you,
and the technical word
is it's spindle-shaped.
It's actually a solid tube of muscle,
held together, if you
like, by the cartilage.
It's called cartilaginous,
and that helps it with its speed.
It makes it lighter.
So it's not a bony structure,
helps it keep afloat.
On the shark's snout
you will find electro-receptors
known as ampullae of Lorenzini.
Many consider this to be the source
of a shark's sixth sense.
By sensing electric fields
emitted by animals in
the surrounding water,
the shark can hone in on its prey.
The great white can travel
up to 56 kilometers per hour.
This speed is assisted by
their torpedo-like body
and endothermic nature.
Another amazing fact
about the white shark
is that it's warm-blooded.
We think of these animals
as being cold-blooded,
but a great white shark
is quickly into action
because it doesn't have
to warm its muscles up.
So you've got this lovely
great big triangular dorsal fin
and then you've got
the engine at the back,
which is the tail fin doing that
and that's sort of driving it forward,
and then the two wings at the side.
And when you see a shark
moving through the water,
you're looking at something
of incredible beauty and grace and power
and incredible evolution,
because it didn't get that by accident.
Fish which
have the capability
of warming their muscles,
such as tuna and the shortfin mako shark,
are often faster and can
sustain a high swim speed
in order to migrate great distances.
Cetaceans,
the dolphins, the whales,
all that whole group of animals,
they're relatively easy
for science to record
in terms of numbers and things like that
because they've got to pop up for air.
Unfortunately, sharks,
and one of the reasons they
got in such terrible trouble
is it's a bit sort of out
of sight, out of mind.
Sharks don't pop up for air.
And so because they're not air-breathing,
they're much, much more difficult
to know how many there are.
A shark's respiratory system
works much like many other
of their marine relatives.
As a shark swims,
water passes through their mouth
and is pushed through their gills.
The gills filter the
oxygen out of the water
and into the shark's bloodstream.
Great whites do do a curious thing.
Great whites do a thing called spyhopping,
which is normally seen in whales
and that's the poking the
head up to have a look around.
And as far as I know,
it's the only shark species that does it.
I've been on shark boats many times
when I worked in South
Africa as a volunteer
and you'll suddenly see an animal,
I call the great whites animals,
you'll suddenly see the
shark pop up beside the boat
and have a look around.
Whether or not it's
responding to the stimulus
of the chum in the water I don't know.
I certainly think that's
making it more curious.
But they are the only
shark species that spyhop,
which is normally what whales do.
When hunting, you really see
the great white's sort of
physique coming to its own
in terms of the speeds achievable.
So you imagine a surfer, or not a surfer,
a seal on the surface of the water.
So the shark's down there.
Now, great white sharks are capable
of breaching completely.
That means the whole body
length out of the water.
So you've got this animal down
there and it's swimming along
and it sees something up there.
And to get its whole
body out of the water,
it's gonna have to achieve a
speed of over 30 miles an hour.
So it's gonna charge up
to the surface, whack,
and come outta the water
at over 30 miles an hour.
The normal sort of cruising
speed is very, very slow.
You'll see them just
literally cruising along
at one, two miles an hour, I would guess.
A sort of normal perhaps hunting speed,
well, maybe about 20 miles an hour
when it's actually going for something.
But when it's breaching
or when it's charging at
something from underneath,
that's what's been recorded,
over 30 miles an hour.
And when you consider the
size of a great white,
this is an animal that gets up
to over five meters in length,
recorded up to six meters in length,
to get that body out of the water,
that's a lot of power.
From Latin,
the great white's name is
translated to ragged tooth,
a fitting name given
that this shark's teeth
has always been a significant trait.
So behind that tooth is
another tooth and another tooth,
and it's like a production line.
And a white shark has probably got
I think about 300 teeth in its mouth
in operation at any one time.
50,000, I believe, teeth
likely in a lifetime.
Now, of course, that depends
how long a lifetime is,
but I guess that when they
arrive at a figure like that
they're probably talking
about an average animal,
maybe 40, 45 years or something like that.
One of the reasons there are so many
great white shark teeth
found on the seabed
and there are so many fossils
is because they're shedding
them the whole time,
and that actually does apply
to most predatory shark species.
When a shark's going for its prey,
so you've got the upper jaw if you like
and then a lower jaw sitting
at that sort of thing.
So that doesn't really work, does it,
in terms of closing your mouth.
So what's got to happen is the
lower jaw dislocates slightly
and comes into line and then it works.
So they can do that,
they can kind of unhinge
their jaw as they're going in
to attack their prey species
By eating fish,
they play a vital role in
benefiting marine ecosystems,
creating balance in the food chain.
One of the reasons that sharks are,
great white sharks in
particular, I suppose,
interact so unfortunately with
humans as often as they do,
which isn't really very often,
is because they often mistake humans
for what they really want to eat.
And what they really
want to eat are seals.
That would be the number
one item on the menu.
And that's why you find
white sharks in South Africa
where there are seal colonies,
in California where
there are seal colonies,
in Australia where
there are seal colonies.
One of the fascinating
facts for Britain actually
is that we've got a pretty
massive seal population
going up the west side of Britain
and particularly right off
the northwest of Scotland.
Huge seal population,
but we don't seem to
have any white sharks.
But seals would be number one menu item.
And then anything, you know,
smaller fish, smaller sharks.
One of the things that's
happening to white sharks
is that their prey list is going down
because it's being
overfished the whole time.
So the smaller shark species are not there
in the abundance they once were.
If a shark is going to mistake
a human on a surfboard for a seal,
then, you know, it knows very quickly
that it's made a mistake.
So you've got this animal
rushing up from underneath and bam,
'cause it's got no hands
or feet to feel you with,
so it got to use its mouth.
So it uses its mouth, it
makes an exploratory bite.
Now, if it's a great white shark,
an exploratory bite is likely
to be quite a horrific affair.
But nevertheless, as soon as it realizes
that it's got a mouthful of yuck,
you know, it's got sinew and
bone and surfboard and wetsuit.
That's not attractive
when it thought it was
getting a lovely juicy seal.
So, exploratory bite, lets you go,
and then hopefully you
get treated very quickly
and you survive.
Without hands
and with the possibility
of their vision being
blocked by ocean sediment,
a shark uses its next
best thing in its arsenal
to investigate potential food sources:
its mouth.
Many misinterpret a shark
bite to be malicious.
Rather, the shark is trying to understand
what is present in the surrounding area.
Some sharks may be docile,
having little to no interest
in its surroundings.
Some, however, are more
active and unpredictable,
a natural mood for a hungry fish.
Great whites are probably separated
from all the other sharks
by their reputation,
and that's kind of unfair, really.
Because we've got say 15
to 20 dangerous sharks
out of 500 and something.
When I say dangerous, these are sharks
that have been recorded
having interactions with man
classified as attacks.
So the white shark is top of the tree,
but I'm not sure that's fair
because it's highly
likely that the bull shark
may be responsible for more
attacks than the white shark.
An awful lot of this happens
because in some water situations,
in estuaries for example,
the bull shark can take
freshwater and saltwater,
so the bull shark can go up estuaries.
Now, in relatively primitive places,
particularly in the third world,
if they're washing,
swimming, bathing, et cetera
in muddy water and estuaries
and a bull shark comes and takes them,
you don't stop and identify the shark.
You know you just get
bitten and then worry.
So an awful lot of attacks
I suspect that may have been attributed
to white sharks in the past
were actually likely to be bull sharks.
One of the things I hate
answering when I'm lecturing,
especially young children,
is what's the difference between
a male and a female shark.
And I know the children when
they're asking this question
when they already know the answer
when they ask the question.
Because what they're asking about
is why do male sharks have two willies?
And that can be really embarrassing
if you are the person giving the lecture
and you've got 200 children out there
having been primed this question.
But males reproduce, and
they're called claspers.
So males have two claspers.
They get calcified.
I don't quite know why they have two,
I don't think the science
actually knows that yet.
So from a reproduction point of view,
it's a very mammalian almost situation.
You have a clasper
inserted into the female.
When reproduction's going on,
the male will grab the female.
It's pretty brutal sometimes,
because if you think about it,
they can't hold, they can't embrace.
I mean, it's a mouth that grabs a female.
I've seen blue sharks with
horrific scarring down their back
where a male's grabbed a female
and then sort of twisted around her
and so on and so forth.
It is an uncomfortable fact
that our oceans are now faced
with three huge threats:
overfishing, pollution,
and climate change,
and nature is facing a breaking point.
Thanks to the food and oxygen it provides,
the seas are integral to
the survival of humanity,
but it must be maintained.
Humans have mismanaged the waters,
pollution has increased,
and by 2050 it is estimated
there will be more plastic
in the ocean than fish.
It would be difficult to overstate
the degree to which the
oceans are in trouble.
And if we look at sharks,
they are apex predators,
so they're the top of the food chain,
and when you remove a link in
a chain, the chain collapses.
So sharks play a hugely important part
in keeping our oceans healthy.
And if we want to continue to exist
on this planet as humans,
we need healthy oceans for our
continued healthy existence.
It's not the only answer,
but we need sharks in those
oceans to keep them healthy.
For years and years
and years now, decades,
sharks have been overfished,
over-persecuted, over-harvested,
often way past a point that
their populations can sustain.
And because sharks reproduce so slowly,
they haven't been able to keep up
with the pressure that's
being put on them.
One good thing that has started
to happen in recent years
I think is that the
publics all over the world
have started to appreciate sharks
not just as sort of
dread machines of attack,
but as the beautiful creatures they are.
There's been a lot of
pressure on governments
here in Europe and in the United States
to put legislation in place
to protect shark populations
and protect the oceans in general.
So I'm hopeful as we go forward now
that sharks do have a future.
If you'd asked me that
question 15, 20 years ago,
I'd have been a lot less sure.
But we've now got a policy
in Europe, for example,
called FNA, fins naturally attached.
Sharks may be landed,
unless they're a protected species.
They may be landed
and the fin must be attached to the shark.
So there's no more slicing
off of fins at sea,
dumping the body, and just
taking all the fins in.
And that used to happen
because the fins were the valuable bit.
Very similar to taking a domestic animal,
let's say a dog or a cat,
chopping its feet off and
leaving it on the pavement.
All that is now being stopped.
Hasn't totally been stopped,
but it is being stopped.
So we've grown up, we've
done all that, that's good.
In China, which used to consume 90%,
no, I believe 95% of the world shark fins,
China is now consuming a lot less.
The Chinese government
has stopped shark fin soup
being served at official
banquets and things like that.
Young people in China, due
to the power of the internet,
they don't want their parents
to buy them shark fin
soup at their weddings.
So there is hope, there have to be hope.
Disrupting
the flow of the ecosystem
disrupts the planet's progress.
The ocean waters would become warmer,
more acidic, and hold less oxygen.
The sea levels would change,
altering the landscape of
coastlines around the globe.
Eventually any creature
which would be left
would not be of use to
us, such as jellyfish,
which would become far more
prominent in the waters.
Many of the problems
which threaten the longevity of the ocean
are far bigger than the
choices of an individual.
There must be large-scale
collective change
in the way the seas and
habitats are maintained.
Such devotion requires the involvement
of governments and businesses.
For me, one of the big
challenges is dispelling the myth.
So here we've got this group of animals
which really are suffering
from an undeserved reputation.
Very few shark attacks
and yet they've got this
dreadful label on them.
And I can't get rid of it,
and all the campaigners like
me, we can't get rid of it.
So why?
It's really interesting to speculate why.
If you go back into ancient
Roman and Greek mythology
and you see naval battles depicted at sea,
you'll see guys being shot off ships
with bows and arrows and
spears and stuff like that
and very often you'll see
sharks depicted in the water
waiting for them to fall overboard.
So right back in Greek and Roman times,
these animals were being
demonized in this way.
I often wonder whether Jonah and the whale
shouldn't actually be
Jonah and the white shark,
the great white shark,
'cause very few whales
will take a human in.
Very few whales have actually
got the structure to do that,
but a six-meter great white
shark certainly could do that.
Perhaps one of the most famous incidents
was a ship called the SS Indianapolis.
And the Indianapolis was an American ship
which went to an island off Japan
at the end of the Second World War,
and they delivered the atomic bombs
that were then put on airplanes
and taken and dropped on Japan.
And the Indianapolis,
having delivered the bombs, got torpedoed.
13, 1,400 men went into the water,
and they stayed in the water
for three or four days or something
before survivors were picked up,
and only 3 or 400, something
like that, came out.
The rest either died of exposure
or injuries or something
or were taken by sharks,
and that was famously
described in the film "Jaws."
But the SS Indianapolis incident
cemented the great white shark
as a sort of hate figure,
fear figure at the end
of the Second World War
and it was very, very widely publicized.
"Jaws," of course, didn't really help.
But I think the main thing is
that we've got this deep-seated
fear of the unknown.
So why are we more frightened of sharks,
for example, than lions?
It's completely illogical.
You've got probably far
more chance with a shark
than with a lion.
I'll tell you why,
it's because it hits the fear buttons,
the fear of the unknown, the
fear of being eaten alive,
the fear of being out of your own element.
And if you think about the film "Jaws"
and that incredible opening scene,
which is so clever
with the girl swimming and being attacked,
all three human fear buttons are hit.
So it's the unknown.
The camera comes up through the water
and the shark takes the girl.
So she's being attacked
by this hidden monster from
the unknown, from underneath.
She's then going to be eaten.
So that's the second fear button.
And of course, she's
in the shark's element,
not her own element.
She's in the water.
So I don't if Benchley
knew what he was doing
when he wrote that
or whether Spielberg
knew what he was doing
when he constructed the scene,
but he hit all three human fear buttons,
and humans from that point in the theater
were absolutely captivated by that.
And that, in general
terms, is it, I think.
It hits the fear buttons.
And the other thing is we must remember
we love our monsters.
Go to any fairground you'd like
in Britain or the United
States or anywhere
and we've got the house of
horrors, the wall of death,
the this, the that, the other.
Do you ever see a house of lovely things?
Do you ever see wall of survival?
No, no, no, it's gotta be horror,
it's gotta be this, that, and the other.
The shark hits all those buttons as well.
So the poor old shark, really,
I can struggle as hard as I can,
and we all try and do, the people like me,
but it's got an awfully
big uphill struggle
'cause it's got to get rid of history
and get rid of sort of really primal fear.
Sharks are not
the bloodthirsty predators
we have been led to
believe for so many years.
They are an intelligent, curious species.
While shark attacks average
around 70 per year over
the past two decades,
it is important to note
that very few of these attacks are fatal.
In 2022, there were 11
deaths caused by fireworks
compared to only five by shark attacks.
Other animals such as
mosquitoes, dogs, and even cows
are more dangerous to humans.
If you live in a country
where there are lots of cows,
and this is a slightly unfair statistic
'cause, you know, if you
live in a rural situation,
you're not gonna be
gonna the ocean anyway,
but there will be more deaths
as a result of accidents
with cows than with sharks.
I feel very sorry for sharks,
'cause they've got so
much more to fear from us
than we have from them.
I wanna put the whole shark attack thing
in a little bit of context.
We've got over 500 species of sharks
and we're still discovering more.
Less than 20 have been
recorded attacking man.
So it's a tiny proportion.
So out of the tiny
proportion that attack man,
if you're being approached
by a shark in the water,
there are some things you do,
but there are basically things
I would say more that you don't do.
Women would be stupid to go in the water
if they were menstruating.
You don't pee in the water.
Urine's just as exciting,
gives up just as much of a smell
as blood or something else.
So you avoid all that.
Avoid shiny, flashy, silver objects,
'cause these sorts of things
can not only attract
the shark's attention,
but might look like a fish.
If you're a surfer, don't go surfing
where you know there are
white sharks on patrol
because there is a possibility
you'll be mistaken for a seal.
So it's kind of common sense, really.
Make yourself as large as possible,
and that's true of any predator.
Most predators are ambush
or chase predators,
and a shark is no different.
On the occasions where I've
felt slightly threatened,
I've always made myself
as big as possible,
spread arms, spread legs,
big camera in my hand
sometimes, et cetera,
to make myself a bigger animal than I am.
A way of avoiding an attack by something
that really maybe thought you were
a threat to a food source, for example,
would be to do exactly the opposite.
I'm no threat.
So do that.
There are various techniques
and you learn them, basically.
Most divers should actually
learn about this sort of thing,
and surfers certainly should
learn about this sort of thing.
The vast majority
of shark attack victims survive.
Most fatalities result from blood loss,
indicating that sharks do
not persist in attacking.
They usually bite once and
then realize their mistake,
as they have no interest in eating humans.
Perhaps the most
famous great white shark
is an animal called Nicole,
named after Nicole Kidman,
who had a real sort of passion
for great white sharks.
And Nicole was tagged off South
Africa with a satellite tag,
and a satellite tag then transmits data
up to a satellite and
eventually the data comes down
and you can see where the animal's gone.
And satellite tags were set to pop off
after a certain period of time.
So Nicole was tagged in South Africa
and then the tag popped off an ocean away
in western Australia 90-odd days later.
So she had made a whole-ocean crossing.
And the most amazing things about this
were that she knew where she was going.
The satellite track showed
she had more or less
gone in a straight line.
Now, any of us humans,
we need a GPS, we need a compass,
we need this, we need
that, we need the other.
We haven't got a clue!
We can't even go from
sort of London in England
to Scotland without help.
A great white shark can do a whole ocean
and it's all in there somehow.
And how did she do it?
Well, we don't know is the answer,
but she's got this electro-sensory
array in her snout,
so she may well have picked up
electromagnetic clues
from the Earth's core,
'cause she did dive down to deep distances
as well as staying near the
surface most of the time.
Maybe she was using stellar clues,
in other words, navigating by the stars.
'cause they do spyhop.
She was within 20 feet of the surface
an awful lot of the time.
But with pretty much pinpoint accuracy,
she knew where she was going.
And then the most amazing thing is
she turned around and came back.
And then later the following year,
she turned up literally a
couple of hundred meters
away from where she'd been
tagged in South Africa.
To stop demonizing
these beautiful creatures,
we must first recognize that
the sea has been their home
for hundreds of millions
of years, not ours.
Future generations should be taught
that sharks are not monsters.
They are much like us,
striving to survive in an
unforgiving environment.
It is our responsibility to ensure
that these magnificent lifeforms
continue to thrive for many years to come.
One of the great things
I would say is, you know,
do regard your natural
world as worth preserving,
'cause if you don't, the
planet won't preserve you.
And do regard sharks as
something of incredible beauty
and something to be
admired and sought after.
Go and try and see 'em.
If you don't wanna get in
the water with 'em, don't.
Stay on the boat and
look down into the water.
But enjoy nature and enjoy your sharks.
And let's, everything on the planet,
let's try and live together.
Let's try and have a future, all of us.
The Earth's oceans.
With boundless depths
and shadowy creatures,
they are a realm of both fear and mystery.
Deep below the surface
dwell some of the most remarkable species.
One particular type of fish
continues to leave the world in awe,
yet remains heavily misunderstood.
Eaten or hunted merely for sport,
humans have largely abandoned a species
that is far more complex
than the bloodthirsty predators
we've been led to believe.
Known globally as sharks,
these fish deserve a more
nuanced understanding.
With sensationalized stories,
illegal fishing,
and the oceans changing
at a record-breaking rate,
the future of sharks is now
more threatened than ever.
Over numerous decades,
sharks have become evil caricatures.
Depicted as mindlessly
ferocious and bloodthirsty,
the media has not shied away
from feeding into the stereotypes
surrounding the species.
The 1975 film "Jaws,"
directed by Steven Spielberg,
was by all accounts a
technical and narrative marvel.
The film featured a police chief,
a marine biologist, and
a local shark hunter
who sought to find and
kill a great white shark
which had fatally attacked
some swimmers prior.
Get everybody out!
Upon release,
the public perception on sharks
had changed for the worse.
In a heartbeat, the fish was demonized.
A shark was now known as
a bloodthirsty creature
which only seeks to kill,
the devil reincarnated.
What came next was
devastating to shark life.
Although the fear of
sharks predates the film,
the impact "Jaws" had on the human psyche
led to a term being
called the "Jaws" effect.
More films and TV shows would follow,
always depicting sharks
in a negative light
and steadily strengthening the
fear people have of the fish.
Films such as "The Shallows" and "The Meg"
are some of the many
which have fallen victim
to the "Jaws" effect.
In an effort to inform the
misconceptions about sharks,
the series "Shark Week" was established
to promote shark conservation.
However, the hatred of this
fish had become global.
Shark attacks would be pushed
to the media forefront,
when in reality these
attacks were extremely scarce
and on many occasions provoked.
So for most people,
there is, yes, just fear.
It's a sort of one-dimensional
view of the shark.
Increasingly in recent years,
and I'm really, really
thrilled about this,
the shark is being seen as the victim
rather than the threat.
People are beginning to realize
that sharks are being way overfished.
For many, many, many years,
their fins were sliced off to
end up in bowls of fin soup.
And to give you an idea of this,
I was doing some some vox
pops down in the street
in Richmond about 12 years ago
with a presenter called
Miranda Krestovnikoff,
and we were trying to
find people in the street
to give us the stereotype answer
of what sharks meant to them.
We wanted shock, horror, fear.
It was really a struggle.
We were asking people what
they thought about sharks
and they were saying,
"Oh, you must understand,
you know, sharks are being overfished,
sharks are being killed.
The real threat is not sharks to humans.
It's humans to sharks."
Which was great news.
It was fantastic, 'cause our
message was getting across.
I would say the shark will always struggle
to lose its image of fear, of attack.
It's just the word.
In parts of China,
Taiwan, and Southeast Asia,
shark fin soup has been a
delicacy since the 1300s.
The process of finning
involved capturing the fish,
slicing off the shark's fin,
and dumping the rest of
the still-living body
back into the ocean.
The fins themselves
became high-value targets
due to their monetary and cultural value.
Shark finning was banned in Europe in 2003
following a UK campaign
to conserve the frighteningly
endangered species.
The finning process is also outlawed
in all high sea tuna fisheries
within Eastern countries such as China,
although shark fins still
continue to be collected
and exported throughout
many different countries.
Sharks have a very
low reproduction rate,
so will commonly produce very few pups.
A great white shark, for example,
typically might produce between three,
maybe 7, 8, 9, maximum maybe 10 pups,
and this doesn't happen very often.
I think the gestation
period for a white shark
is about eight or nine months.
So low production rates,
so very, very, very susceptible
to being overfished.
So you start taking too
many of these animals out
and they don't sexually mature
until I think females are about,
I think females are about
14, males are about 12.
So very difficult for shark populations
to take a lot of fishing pressure.
And certainly through the '90s,
the early part of this century,
when shark fins were being harvested
at an absolutely obscene rate,
you know, not a million, not two million,
tens of millions of fins a
year just being sliced off
to end up in bowls of,
frankly, rather tasteless soup.
And the reason that sort
of started happening
was because of the huge growth
in the Chinese population
that could afford the luxuries.
So suddenly it wasn't just, you know,
the communist politburo
or the top guys who
could afford this stuff;
it was the middle class who
suddenly had a lot of money,
so the whole market went berserk.
And shark's fin soup
went from being something
that people dreamt about
to something that people
served at their weddings
and all sorts of social events.
It was a little bit of sort
of a mark of having made it.
You know, instead of serving caviar
which you might do in this society here,
serve shark fin soup.
And so enormous pressure on sharks.
Sharks were harvested,
tens of millions, hundreds of millions,
and it really does show.
I mean, I've visited
various places in the world
where there are no sharks.
Liz Downey,
maritime expert at the London Aquarium,
says sharks are being slaughtered so fast
soon there won't be any left to fish.
At the moment, the
trade is so unsustainable
that it will end up that
we will no longer have
a fishing trade for sharks if we carry on,
and it may have more
devastating effects than that
in actually resulting in
extinction of some species.
It is the shark's fin,
the mere sight of which
is enough to cause terror,
that threatens to be its downfall.
A trip down London's Chinatown
quickly shows the reason why.
Across the world, particularly
in Asian communities,
there's an insatiable
appetite for shark's fin soup
and other traditional recipes
made from the fin of the killer fish.
Environmentalists say we
should care about the shark
because it does a good job
feeding on weak and sick fish,
maintaining nature's
balance in the oceans.
They insist its evil reputation
is largely undeserved.
Since the 1970s,
the shark population saw
a decline like no other.
By 2024, over 71% of
biomass has been overfished.
Each year, over 100
million sharks are killed.
According to Nat Geo,
there has been a 79% drop
in the great white family
and 80% drop in thresher sharks
and a 99% drop in bull
sharks, dusky sharks,
smooth hammerheads, and porbeagle sharks.
I grew up in the in the Gulf,
in Kuwait and Bahrain
and places like that,
and sharks were in our lives all the time.
I then led about six shark
expeditions to the Gulf
looking for sharks and we chummed,
so we put stuff in the
water to attract sharks
for over 400 hours
and we only had one large predatory shark.
One.
We found lots of dead
sharks in the markets.
So we were able to study our sharks,
and from a scientific perspective,
the thing worked in that respect,
but that just shows you the
extraordinary rate of depletion
in that particular piece of water.
'Cause when I was a kid
growing up in the Gulf,
sharks were there literally all the time.
It's a treat to see a shark
and it's almost unheard
of now to see a big shark.
You're normally seeing small blacktips
and small reef sharks
and things like that.
So all over the world, I'm
afraid, massively depleted.
And with a species like
the great white shark,
we don't have any idea how many there are.
They're probably much more depleted
even than something like lions.
You read figures with the white shark
of between 3,500 and 5,000
animals in the whole planet.
I mean, that's frightening stuff.
Of course, they don't breathe air
like sort of dolphins, whales
and this, that, and the other,
so more difficult to count.
I mean, more difficult to
get an idea of populations,
but we do know the population
is massively depleted.
Sharks are now going extinct
at an alarming rate.
After the release of "Jaws,"
more fishermen became obsessed
over showing their ability
to kill the species.
By taking a small boat out onto the water
or simply fishing from the shore,
catching sharks as large as 500 pounds
was possible with a
reasonably-sized rod and reel.
Alongside people fishing on their own,
people began to sponsor tournaments
to initiate organized
shark fishing for prizes.
The death of a shark was celebrated.
How did the great white shark
become one of the world's
most dominant predators?
The story starts over
380 million years ago
during what was known
as the Devonian Period.
The first shark species
was known the Cladoselache,
although it has also speculated
that this was a type of chimaera
due to its anatomy
consisting of cartilage.
I guess for many, many, many years,
I was really into sharks.
What I wanted to do was
basically save sharks.
I became aware in the 1980s
of the incredible threat
the world shark populations were facing,
mainly due to finning and overfishing.
So for 30-odd years I was
sort of a shark crusader.
When I was eight years
old, I was sent out from UK
where I was at prep school,
boarding school, to Kuwait,
and all I wanted to do was go swimming.
'Cause it was Easter and
it was Easter time here,
so not warm, but really
warm in Kuwait in the Gulf.
And I got there
and my mother said no
swimming outside our house
because there had been a shark attack.
I mean, how exciting is
that to an eight-year-old?
So I was really disappointed
I couldn't go swimming
and I spent virtually the
whole of that Easter holiday
sitting on the garden wall
waiting for a fin to go like that
and hoping there would
be someone in the water.
That's pretty bizarre,
but it's kind of the way
small boys are, you know?
It never happened.
So I was literally hooked
on sharks, and still am.
Though sharks
do not possess bones,
they can still fossilize,
resulting in the spectacular condition
of their skeletons and teeth
which remain in museums today.
As sharks age, calcium salts are deposited
into their skeletal
cartilage to strengthen them.
The jaws of a shark are so solid
one might confuse them for bone.
The skeletal structure allows
the shark to remain light
and their large livers are
filled with low-density oils,
which allows them to keep
buoyant in the ocean.
The curious thing about sharks
is that although they've
evolved massively in some ways,
they're a perfectly evolved animal,
which is why they've survived.
They are an incredible animal
in the sense that they're perfect.
You know, we've got our senses,
touch, smell, taste, et cetera.
They've got our senses plus one.
And if you think about them
swimming through the water,
they look like a fighter plane.
So they look like the
wings out there, you know,
and the tail wing up there,
and they're this thing and
they're covered in little teeth.
The body's covered in little
teeth called dermal denticles.
This means they've got very,
very, very little resistance
going through the water.
They can swim, you know, effortlessly.
If you watch them,
it's just a very chilled-out thing
until something makes 'em
do something different.
Traditionally,
if one was to determine
the age of a shark,
their vertebrae would need to be examined.
The vertebrae contains pairs
of translucent and opaque bands
which can be counted
like the rings of a tree.
Scientists have discovered
the method may be inaccurate
due to the varying nature of
the shark's size and species.
This inaccuracy led to a new
study on deposition rate,
indicating the quantity of bands produced
are in accordance with each
species and size class.
By validating the deposition rate,
the age of a shark be
calculated with more accuracy.
During the Devonian Period,
the ocean was swarming
with ancient marine animals
such as ammonoids, an
extinct form of mollusk.
The trilobites,
an ancient ancestor of
crabs known as arthropods,
were steadily declining,
likely due to their inefficient anatomy.
Abundant fossil remains
show that the trilobites
had segmented bodies
and simple jointed appendages
similar to modern crustaceans.
It was clear to see
that the new age of marine
life was on the horizon.
Species were evolving to
ensure their survival.
Sharks in particular would find themselves
in a very dominant position.
Towards the end of the Devonian Period
came an extinction event so devastating
that it had wiped out 75%
of the Earth's species.
Global temperatures had
reached a height so severe
that the mixing rate of the oceans
had altered between the
surface and lower layers.
The bottom waters experienced
a low reoxygenation rate,
leading to the death
of many ocean species.
We've been here five minutes,
200,000 years actually,
and the way we're going,
we're gonna be very lucky to
be here another few hundred,
let alone 100,00.
So the sharks have been here forever
and we're just a teeny little weeny blip,
and I suspect they'll
be here when we're gone.
The
Carboniferous Period had begun
and is now widely known to
be the golden age for sharks.
The golden age not only set sharks
as dominant predators in the ocean,
but it also gave birth to
many variants of shark.
The Stethacanthus is one
of the stranger types
to roam the sea.
Evolving from the chimaera lineage,
this particular shark had developed
a distinctive anvil-shaped
fin on its back.
By the end of the golden age,
the seas were swarming
in a presumed 45 different shark families.
From the harsh temperature change
during the Permian-Triassic Period
to the alleged meteorite
which killed the dinosaurs
in the Jurassic period,
it is clear that sharks
have stood the test of time.
The shark species have
miraculously survived
five major extinction events.
Although a contributing factor,
this wasn't just due
to the sheer hardiness
and durability of the fish.
Sharks are malleable.
Their ability to survive
lies in their exploitation
of different parts of the water column,
from the shallow waters
to the deep dark oceans and even rivers.
Their diet is also vast.
Sharks will feed on something
as small as plankton
to prey as large as whales.
Their diversity has also
played a massive part.
Whilst many species of
shark had gone extinct,
such as the Stethacanthus
and the notorious megalodon,
many have evolved to survive,
requiring far less food in
order to sustain themselves,
unlike their giant ancestors.
Megalodon.
So 15 meters worth of fish
weighing up to 10
elephants worth, 50 tons,
and a mouth two meters wide.
I mean, it's a good job this
guy isn't around, it really is.
And teeth about 20 centimeters.
The white shark is kind
of like a mini megalodon.
Science thinks that white sharks
are descended from the same
sort of branch of ancestry.
But yeah, what a fish that was.
You can actually buy fossil teeth.
Probably big ones would be
about 20 meters, top to bottom.
Big fish, big teeth.
To be avoided.
I don't like to think of things extinct,
but I'm kind of glad
they're extinct actually.
The anatomy
of a shark naturally varies
depending on the biology
of their predecessors.
The hammerhead shark, for instance,
one of the youngest
families in our ocean today,
is estimated to have evolved
from a carcharhinid ancestor,
also known as a requiem shark.
The unusual shape of its head
is an amazing piece of anatomy,
built to maximize the fish's ability
to find its favorite meal, stingrays.
The great white shark, simply
known as a white shark,
has a remarkable anatomy.
Their species are classically
shaped with a pointed snout,
a triangular dorsal fin,
and a crescent-shaped caudal fin.
Each white shark is unique
and identifiable by the
color of their flanks,
ranging from very pale
undersides to a grayish black.
This also allows them to
view their prey from above,
disguising themselves with the pale sky.
The nostrils of the white shark
are on the underside of the snout
and lead to an organ
called the olfactory bulb.
The white shark is reported to possess
the largest olfactory
bulb of any shark species.
This is likely the cause
of many exaggerated rumors
regarding the great
white's sense of smell.
Whilst their scent is incredible,
sharks cannot smell a drop
of blood from a mile away
as many have proclaimed.
Scents travel to the great white
as they do to any living
being, through particles,
in this case carried by the ocean current.
The great white shark is
a temperate seas animal,
so it's really, really widespread.
It can take anything,
I believe from one
degree it's been clocked,
going down to one degree,
but normally five or six
degrees to about 25 degrees,
which means a vast band
of the world's oceans.
If you want to go and
see a great white shark,
then South Africa was a good place
until they went to war with orcas.
South Australia's a good place.
New Zealand's a good place.
California's a good place.
New England's a good place.
Anywhere in that sort of temperate band
of oceans around the world.
And I would say to
anybody, don't be worried.
You know, go and see a great white shark.
It's gonna be an experience
that's gonna blow you away.
I was working long time
ago on basking sharks
with an American photographer,
very famous one at the
time called Jeff Rotman.
And Jeff said, "Richard,
the first time you see a
white shark underwater,
it blows your away, it's indescribable."
About three years later I was in the water
in a cage in South Africa
and my first white shark swum up to me,
right, right, right up to the cage,
reasonable-sized animal,
probably about four meters.
And Jeff was right.
There aren't any words,
there's absolutely nothing
to describe what you feel
when that amazing creature
is just sort of, you know,
just coming up to say hello.
In those days, this is
a few years ago now,
we weren't just in cages.
I mean, you know, it was
a bit get the T-shirt,
get the tattoo, go outside the cage,
which was actually a
bit stupid and bonkers.
We all decided to go free diving anyway.
You're in a cage and this
thing comes up to you.
In a way, the thing that worried me most,
'cause I was leading a
team out there to do that,
was the very fact that
it wasn't frightening.
It was kind of spellbinding.
It was extraordinary.
It was an amazing experience
and you almost wanted to reach
out, and some people did.
And as the shark went by,
you almost wanted to stroke it.
Now, that may sound absolutely bonkers,
but it's true and people were.
And I could see from up on the deck
the guys looking down,
and one guy had his breather
taken out of his mouth
because he had done that
and they wanted him up there
to tell him off pretty quickly,
'cause that is bonkers.
You know, start sticking
bits of your body outside,
you're asking for trouble.
But you've got this incredible animal,
you're inches away if you're lucky,
and there's no feeling of aggression.
There really is no feeling of threat.
There's just a feeling of total awe.
The great white shark
is this sort of extraordinary
fighter aircraft
swimming through the water at you,
and the technical word
is it's spindle-shaped.
It's actually a solid tube of muscle,
held together, if you
like, by the cartilage.
It's called cartilaginous,
and that helps it with its speed.
It makes it lighter.
So it's not a bony structure,
helps it keep afloat.
On the shark's snout
you will find electro-receptors
known as ampullae of Lorenzini.
Many consider this to be the source
of a shark's sixth sense.
By sensing electric fields
emitted by animals in
the surrounding water,
the shark can hone in on its prey.
The great white can travel
up to 56 kilometers per hour.
This speed is assisted by
their torpedo-like body
and endothermic nature.
Another amazing fact
about the white shark
is that it's warm-blooded.
We think of these animals
as being cold-blooded,
but a great white shark
is quickly into action
because it doesn't have
to warm its muscles up.
So you've got this lovely
great big triangular dorsal fin
and then you've got
the engine at the back,
which is the tail fin doing that
and that's sort of driving it forward,
and then the two wings at the side.
And when you see a shark
moving through the water,
you're looking at something
of incredible beauty and grace and power
and incredible evolution,
because it didn't get that by accident.
Fish which
have the capability
of warming their muscles,
such as tuna and the shortfin mako shark,
are often faster and can
sustain a high swim speed
in order to migrate great distances.
Cetaceans,
the dolphins, the whales,
all that whole group of animals,
they're relatively easy
for science to record
in terms of numbers and things like that
because they've got to pop up for air.
Unfortunately, sharks,
and one of the reasons they
got in such terrible trouble
is it's a bit sort of out
of sight, out of mind.
Sharks don't pop up for air.
And so because they're not air-breathing,
they're much, much more difficult
to know how many there are.
A shark's respiratory system
works much like many other
of their marine relatives.
As a shark swims,
water passes through their mouth
and is pushed through their gills.
The gills filter the
oxygen out of the water
and into the shark's bloodstream.
Great whites do do a curious thing.
Great whites do a thing called spyhopping,
which is normally seen in whales
and that's the poking the
head up to have a look around.
And as far as I know,
it's the only shark species that does it.
I've been on shark boats many times
when I worked in South
Africa as a volunteer
and you'll suddenly see an animal,
I call the great whites animals,
you'll suddenly see the
shark pop up beside the boat
and have a look around.
Whether or not it's
responding to the stimulus
of the chum in the water I don't know.
I certainly think that's
making it more curious.
But they are the only
shark species that spyhop,
which is normally what whales do.
When hunting, you really see
the great white's sort of
physique coming to its own
in terms of the speeds achievable.
So you imagine a surfer, or not a surfer,
a seal on the surface of the water.
So the shark's down there.
Now, great white sharks are capable
of breaching completely.
That means the whole body
length out of the water.
So you've got this animal down
there and it's swimming along
and it sees something up there.
And to get its whole
body out of the water,
it's gonna have to achieve a
speed of over 30 miles an hour.
So it's gonna charge up
to the surface, whack,
and come outta the water
at over 30 miles an hour.
The normal sort of cruising
speed is very, very slow.
You'll see them just
literally cruising along
at one, two miles an hour, I would guess.
A sort of normal perhaps hunting speed,
well, maybe about 20 miles an hour
when it's actually going for something.
But when it's breaching
or when it's charging at
something from underneath,
that's what's been recorded,
over 30 miles an hour.
And when you consider the
size of a great white,
this is an animal that gets up
to over five meters in length,
recorded up to six meters in length,
to get that body out of the water,
that's a lot of power.
From Latin,
the great white's name is
translated to ragged tooth,
a fitting name given
that this shark's teeth
has always been a significant trait.
So behind that tooth is
another tooth and another tooth,
and it's like a production line.
And a white shark has probably got
I think about 300 teeth in its mouth
in operation at any one time.
50,000, I believe, teeth
likely in a lifetime.
Now, of course, that depends
how long a lifetime is,
but I guess that when they
arrive at a figure like that
they're probably talking
about an average animal,
maybe 40, 45 years or something like that.
One of the reasons there are so many
great white shark teeth
found on the seabed
and there are so many fossils
is because they're shedding
them the whole time,
and that actually does apply
to most predatory shark species.
When a shark's going for its prey,
so you've got the upper jaw if you like
and then a lower jaw sitting
at that sort of thing.
So that doesn't really work, does it,
in terms of closing your mouth.
So what's got to happen is the
lower jaw dislocates slightly
and comes into line and then it works.
So they can do that,
they can kind of unhinge
their jaw as they're going in
to attack their prey species
By eating fish,
they play a vital role in
benefiting marine ecosystems,
creating balance in the food chain.
One of the reasons that sharks are,
great white sharks in
particular, I suppose,
interact so unfortunately with
humans as often as they do,
which isn't really very often,
is because they often mistake humans
for what they really want to eat.
And what they really
want to eat are seals.
That would be the number
one item on the menu.
And that's why you find
white sharks in South Africa
where there are seal colonies,
in California where
there are seal colonies,
in Australia where
there are seal colonies.
One of the fascinating
facts for Britain actually
is that we've got a pretty
massive seal population
going up the west side of Britain
and particularly right off
the northwest of Scotland.
Huge seal population,
but we don't seem to
have any white sharks.
But seals would be number one menu item.
And then anything, you know,
smaller fish, smaller sharks.
One of the things that's
happening to white sharks
is that their prey list is going down
because it's being
overfished the whole time.
So the smaller shark species are not there
in the abundance they once were.
If a shark is going to mistake
a human on a surfboard for a seal,
then, you know, it knows very quickly
that it's made a mistake.
So you've got this animal
rushing up from underneath and bam,
'cause it's got no hands
or feet to feel you with,
so it got to use its mouth.
So it uses its mouth, it
makes an exploratory bite.
Now, if it's a great white shark,
an exploratory bite is likely
to be quite a horrific affair.
But nevertheless, as soon as it realizes
that it's got a mouthful of yuck,
you know, it's got sinew and
bone and surfboard and wetsuit.
That's not attractive
when it thought it was
getting a lovely juicy seal.
So, exploratory bite, lets you go,
and then hopefully you
get treated very quickly
and you survive.
Without hands
and with the possibility
of their vision being
blocked by ocean sediment,
a shark uses its next
best thing in its arsenal
to investigate potential food sources:
its mouth.
Many misinterpret a shark
bite to be malicious.
Rather, the shark is trying to understand
what is present in the surrounding area.
Some sharks may be docile,
having little to no interest
in its surroundings.
Some, however, are more
active and unpredictable,
a natural mood for a hungry fish.
Great whites are probably separated
from all the other sharks
by their reputation,
and that's kind of unfair, really.
Because we've got say 15
to 20 dangerous sharks
out of 500 and something.
When I say dangerous, these are sharks
that have been recorded
having interactions with man
classified as attacks.
So the white shark is top of the tree,
but I'm not sure that's fair
because it's highly
likely that the bull shark
may be responsible for more
attacks than the white shark.
An awful lot of this happens
because in some water situations,
in estuaries for example,
the bull shark can take
freshwater and saltwater,
so the bull shark can go up estuaries.
Now, in relatively primitive places,
particularly in the third world,
if they're washing,
swimming, bathing, et cetera
in muddy water and estuaries
and a bull shark comes and takes them,
you don't stop and identify the shark.
You know you just get
bitten and then worry.
So an awful lot of attacks
I suspect that may have been attributed
to white sharks in the past
were actually likely to be bull sharks.
One of the things I hate
answering when I'm lecturing,
especially young children,
is what's the difference between
a male and a female shark.
And I know the children when
they're asking this question
when they already know the answer
when they ask the question.
Because what they're asking about
is why do male sharks have two willies?
And that can be really embarrassing
if you are the person giving the lecture
and you've got 200 children out there
having been primed this question.
But males reproduce, and
they're called claspers.
So males have two claspers.
They get calcified.
I don't quite know why they have two,
I don't think the science
actually knows that yet.
So from a reproduction point of view,
it's a very mammalian almost situation.
You have a clasper
inserted into the female.
When reproduction's going on,
the male will grab the female.
It's pretty brutal sometimes,
because if you think about it,
they can't hold, they can't embrace.
I mean, it's a mouth that grabs a female.
I've seen blue sharks with
horrific scarring down their back
where a male's grabbed a female
and then sort of twisted around her
and so on and so forth.
It is an uncomfortable fact
that our oceans are now faced
with three huge threats:
overfishing, pollution,
and climate change,
and nature is facing a breaking point.
Thanks to the food and oxygen it provides,
the seas are integral to
the survival of humanity,
but it must be maintained.
Humans have mismanaged the waters,
pollution has increased,
and by 2050 it is estimated
there will be more plastic
in the ocean than fish.
It would be difficult to overstate
the degree to which the
oceans are in trouble.
And if we look at sharks,
they are apex predators,
so they're the top of the food chain,
and when you remove a link in
a chain, the chain collapses.
So sharks play a hugely important part
in keeping our oceans healthy.
And if we want to continue to exist
on this planet as humans,
we need healthy oceans for our
continued healthy existence.
It's not the only answer,
but we need sharks in those
oceans to keep them healthy.
For years and years
and years now, decades,
sharks have been overfished,
over-persecuted, over-harvested,
often way past a point that
their populations can sustain.
And because sharks reproduce so slowly,
they haven't been able to keep up
with the pressure that's
being put on them.
One good thing that has started
to happen in recent years
I think is that the
publics all over the world
have started to appreciate sharks
not just as sort of
dread machines of attack,
but as the beautiful creatures they are.
There's been a lot of
pressure on governments
here in Europe and in the United States
to put legislation in place
to protect shark populations
and protect the oceans in general.
So I'm hopeful as we go forward now
that sharks do have a future.
If you'd asked me that
question 15, 20 years ago,
I'd have been a lot less sure.
But we've now got a policy
in Europe, for example,
called FNA, fins naturally attached.
Sharks may be landed,
unless they're a protected species.
They may be landed
and the fin must be attached to the shark.
So there's no more slicing
off of fins at sea,
dumping the body, and just
taking all the fins in.
And that used to happen
because the fins were the valuable bit.
Very similar to taking a domestic animal,
let's say a dog or a cat,
chopping its feet off and
leaving it on the pavement.
All that is now being stopped.
Hasn't totally been stopped,
but it is being stopped.
So we've grown up, we've
done all that, that's good.
In China, which used to consume 90%,
no, I believe 95% of the world shark fins,
China is now consuming a lot less.
The Chinese government
has stopped shark fin soup
being served at official
banquets and things like that.
Young people in China, due
to the power of the internet,
they don't want their parents
to buy them shark fin
soup at their weddings.
So there is hope, there have to be hope.
Disrupting
the flow of the ecosystem
disrupts the planet's progress.
The ocean waters would become warmer,
more acidic, and hold less oxygen.
The sea levels would change,
altering the landscape of
coastlines around the globe.
Eventually any creature
which would be left
would not be of use to
us, such as jellyfish,
which would become far more
prominent in the waters.
Many of the problems
which threaten the longevity of the ocean
are far bigger than the
choices of an individual.
There must be large-scale
collective change
in the way the seas and
habitats are maintained.
Such devotion requires the involvement
of governments and businesses.
For me, one of the big
challenges is dispelling the myth.
So here we've got this group of animals
which really are suffering
from an undeserved reputation.
Very few shark attacks
and yet they've got this
dreadful label on them.
And I can't get rid of it,
and all the campaigners like
me, we can't get rid of it.
So why?
It's really interesting to speculate why.
If you go back into ancient
Roman and Greek mythology
and you see naval battles depicted at sea,
you'll see guys being shot off ships
with bows and arrows and
spears and stuff like that
and very often you'll see
sharks depicted in the water
waiting for them to fall overboard.
So right back in Greek and Roman times,
these animals were being
demonized in this way.
I often wonder whether Jonah and the whale
shouldn't actually be
Jonah and the white shark,
the great white shark,
'cause very few whales
will take a human in.
Very few whales have actually
got the structure to do that,
but a six-meter great white
shark certainly could do that.
Perhaps one of the most famous incidents
was a ship called the SS Indianapolis.
And the Indianapolis was an American ship
which went to an island off Japan
at the end of the Second World War,
and they delivered the atomic bombs
that were then put on airplanes
and taken and dropped on Japan.
And the Indianapolis,
having delivered the bombs, got torpedoed.
13, 1,400 men went into the water,
and they stayed in the water
for three or four days or something
before survivors were picked up,
and only 3 or 400, something
like that, came out.
The rest either died of exposure
or injuries or something
or were taken by sharks,
and that was famously
described in the film "Jaws."
But the SS Indianapolis incident
cemented the great white shark
as a sort of hate figure,
fear figure at the end
of the Second World War
and it was very, very widely publicized.
"Jaws," of course, didn't really help.
But I think the main thing is
that we've got this deep-seated
fear of the unknown.
So why are we more frightened of sharks,
for example, than lions?
It's completely illogical.
You've got probably far
more chance with a shark
than with a lion.
I'll tell you why,
it's because it hits the fear buttons,
the fear of the unknown, the
fear of being eaten alive,
the fear of being out of your own element.
And if you think about the film "Jaws"
and that incredible opening scene,
which is so clever
with the girl swimming and being attacked,
all three human fear buttons are hit.
So it's the unknown.
The camera comes up through the water
and the shark takes the girl.
So she's being attacked
by this hidden monster from
the unknown, from underneath.
She's then going to be eaten.
So that's the second fear button.
And of course, she's
in the shark's element,
not her own element.
She's in the water.
So I don't if Benchley
knew what he was doing
when he wrote that
or whether Spielberg
knew what he was doing
when he constructed the scene,
but he hit all three human fear buttons,
and humans from that point in the theater
were absolutely captivated by that.
And that, in general
terms, is it, I think.
It hits the fear buttons.
And the other thing is we must remember
we love our monsters.
Go to any fairground you'd like
in Britain or the United
States or anywhere
and we've got the house of
horrors, the wall of death,
the this, the that, the other.
Do you ever see a house of lovely things?
Do you ever see wall of survival?
No, no, no, it's gotta be horror,
it's gotta be this, that, and the other.
The shark hits all those buttons as well.
So the poor old shark, really,
I can struggle as hard as I can,
and we all try and do, the people like me,
but it's got an awfully
big uphill struggle
'cause it's got to get rid of history
and get rid of sort of really primal fear.
Sharks are not
the bloodthirsty predators
we have been led to
believe for so many years.
They are an intelligent, curious species.
While shark attacks average
around 70 per year over
the past two decades,
it is important to note
that very few of these attacks are fatal.
In 2022, there were 11
deaths caused by fireworks
compared to only five by shark attacks.
Other animals such as
mosquitoes, dogs, and even cows
are more dangerous to humans.
If you live in a country
where there are lots of cows,
and this is a slightly unfair statistic
'cause, you know, if you
live in a rural situation,
you're not gonna be
gonna the ocean anyway,
but there will be more deaths
as a result of accidents
with cows than with sharks.
I feel very sorry for sharks,
'cause they've got so
much more to fear from us
than we have from them.
I wanna put the whole shark attack thing
in a little bit of context.
We've got over 500 species of sharks
and we're still discovering more.
Less than 20 have been
recorded attacking man.
So it's a tiny proportion.
So out of the tiny
proportion that attack man,
if you're being approached
by a shark in the water,
there are some things you do,
but there are basically things
I would say more that you don't do.
Women would be stupid to go in the water
if they were menstruating.
You don't pee in the water.
Urine's just as exciting,
gives up just as much of a smell
as blood or something else.
So you avoid all that.
Avoid shiny, flashy, silver objects,
'cause these sorts of things
can not only attract
the shark's attention,
but might look like a fish.
If you're a surfer, don't go surfing
where you know there are
white sharks on patrol
because there is a possibility
you'll be mistaken for a seal.
So it's kind of common sense, really.
Make yourself as large as possible,
and that's true of any predator.
Most predators are ambush
or chase predators,
and a shark is no different.
On the occasions where I've
felt slightly threatened,
I've always made myself
as big as possible,
spread arms, spread legs,
big camera in my hand
sometimes, et cetera,
to make myself a bigger animal than I am.
A way of avoiding an attack by something
that really maybe thought you were
a threat to a food source, for example,
would be to do exactly the opposite.
I'm no threat.
So do that.
There are various techniques
and you learn them, basically.
Most divers should actually
learn about this sort of thing,
and surfers certainly should
learn about this sort of thing.
The vast majority
of shark attack victims survive.
Most fatalities result from blood loss,
indicating that sharks do
not persist in attacking.
They usually bite once and
then realize their mistake,
as they have no interest in eating humans.
Perhaps the most
famous great white shark
is an animal called Nicole,
named after Nicole Kidman,
who had a real sort of passion
for great white sharks.
And Nicole was tagged off South
Africa with a satellite tag,
and a satellite tag then transmits data
up to a satellite and
eventually the data comes down
and you can see where the animal's gone.
And satellite tags were set to pop off
after a certain period of time.
So Nicole was tagged in South Africa
and then the tag popped off an ocean away
in western Australia 90-odd days later.
So she had made a whole-ocean crossing.
And the most amazing things about this
were that she knew where she was going.
The satellite track showed
she had more or less
gone in a straight line.
Now, any of us humans,
we need a GPS, we need a compass,
we need this, we need
that, we need the other.
We haven't got a clue!
We can't even go from
sort of London in England
to Scotland without help.
A great white shark can do a whole ocean
and it's all in there somehow.
And how did she do it?
Well, we don't know is the answer,
but she's got this electro-sensory
array in her snout,
so she may well have picked up
electromagnetic clues
from the Earth's core,
'cause she did dive down to deep distances
as well as staying near the
surface most of the time.
Maybe she was using stellar clues,
in other words, navigating by the stars.
'cause they do spyhop.
She was within 20 feet of the surface
an awful lot of the time.
But with pretty much pinpoint accuracy,
she knew where she was going.
And then the most amazing thing is
she turned around and came back.
And then later the following year,
she turned up literally a
couple of hundred meters
away from where she'd been
tagged in South Africa.
To stop demonizing
these beautiful creatures,
we must first recognize that
the sea has been their home
for hundreds of millions
of years, not ours.
Future generations should be taught
that sharks are not monsters.
They are much like us,
striving to survive in an
unforgiving environment.
It is our responsibility to ensure
that these magnificent lifeforms
continue to thrive for many years to come.
One of the great things
I would say is, you know,
do regard your natural
world as worth preserving,
'cause if you don't, the
planet won't preserve you.
And do regard sharks as
something of incredible beauty
and something to be
admired and sought after.
Go and try and see 'em.
If you don't wanna get in
the water with 'em, don't.
Stay on the boat and
look down into the water.
But enjoy nature and enjoy your sharks.
And let's, everything on the planet,
let's try and live together.
Let's try and have a future, all of us.