Marine Biologist Breaks Down Shark Attack Scenes from Movies | GQ

the one thing i don't understand is why are people always surprised when there's a shark in the ocean like you're throwing dead animals into the ocean what did you think was gonna pop up flipper hey gq i'm melissa christina marquez and i'm a marine biologist this is the breakdown [Music] first up jaws so jaws is probably one of my favorite shark movies hands down while it didn't inspire me to become a shark scientist it definitely piqued my interest in what these animals were all about all right so you see that that's called counter camouflage so that's when a shark has two different colors it's usually darker on top and lighter on the bottom and it's just for these kind of purposes where it's really hard to see the shark even though the water is pretty clear and it's not that far away it's an amazing tactic that they use for stealth and being able to surprise attack a prey if you look at a shark from above and you're looking down the darker skin color actually blends into the ocean water and the ocean ground whereas if you're looking up at a shark from when you're beneath it the white belly actually kind of looks like sunlight trickling down so what you just saw is actually something really common in shark science which means the shark leaves a lot of time we want the shark to come right at us and usually it leaves but these cages are perfect for not only seeing sharks underwater but actually tagging them with something that lets us actually know more about its lifestyle so where it's been where it's going what it's doing what it's eating at what temperature or light depth it's at so a lot of times we actually have a similar pull to what you saw here with kind of like a dart at the end of it and at that dart we actually attach a tag to it and embed it in what's that dorsal fin so that top fin for the shark you try to embed it in there because that's probably one of the toughest areas to get rid of a tag so it doesn't hurt the shark it kind of feels like a bit of a pinch very similar to what you saw you kind of hold on to the edges of the bar kind of wait for the shark to come by and you kind of just stab at the shark and hope it sticks otherwise that's thousands of dollars that have just sunk to the bottom of the ocean we don't ever inject our sharks with poison it probably wouldn't work they have quite high immune systems they're not impenetrable but i've never heard of anyone successfully trying or wanting to try to poison a shark through a dart method i love the iconic jaws music the build-up of the music is amazing because you're just kind of sitting there in suspense being like right when's it gonna happen when's it gonna happen when's the ah there's the big boy [Music] in jaws bruce which is the main character is a great white shark while sharks sometimes can ram a cage especially if the bait is being pulled really really close to the cage unlike a lot of fish shark actually can't swim backwards so once they're going somewhere they really have not much wiggle room to be able to backtrack so a lot of times if the bait is being pulled too close to the cage or the shark itself gets too close to the cage it can't go backwards and it has to ram into the cage personally for me i haven't had any bad cage experiences i have had sharks actually ram the cage will it make a dent like this no i'd have to be a really really big shark and so far from all of the experiences that i've had and that i've seen no shark can do that much damage to a cage most of the shark cages that you see nowadays actually have the same exact structure as the cages back in the 70s and the 80s so even back then a shark wouldn't be able to make such a big dent in it so that is probably one of my favorite parts of the entire movie just because you can see how fake bruce looks um but i mean it wasn't bad for way back when when they kind of made all the animatronics for this [Music] a few times i have seen a shark actually enter a cage it's usually a smaller shirt that's actually gone in between the bars by accident and it does not like it whatsoever it's actually most of the time pretty terrified the ending of this clip is actually real sharks on top of a shark diving cage it does happen they usually do freak out and as you can kind of see there's a lot of thrashing as they're trying to get back into their natural environment back into the ocean so the reason why he dove all the way down to the bottom of the ocean floor is because sharks are what we call ambush predators so they like attacking something at the surface whereas something on the actual ground can see where a shark is coming kind of wedged themselves into a place of safety so it's not so much that sharks can't go that deep it's a lot harder for them to actually be with a surprise attack which is their preferred mode of hunting jaws actually helped kind of have a catalyst of not only people who were interested in sharks but also people who were absolutely terrified of sharks the author peter eventually actually regrets writing it and spent a lot of his time doing ocean conservation and trying to right the wrong of making sharks not be as vilified but unfortunately a lot of people still do cite this movie as one reason as to why they are so afraid of sharks and the ocean next up we've got the meg megalodon is a very very very extinct shark uh contrary to what some things might say out there it is no longer in our oceans unfortunately but it was a giant shark that a lot of people have likened to look like a great white shark even though it is actually more closely related to other sharks such as mako sharks there's quite a few theories that have gone around as to why it became extinct everything from climate change to a giant meteor that their prey item ran out so it's really really interesting to kind of see what ended up happening with this big shark but there is a giant fascination with this giant predator well we don't know if megalodon would actually go through kelp forest it's actually just been recently found out that great white sharks which are a relative of the megalodon shark actually does go through kelp forest previously a lot of shark scientists we all believe that sharks kind of didn't like that barrier and stayed away from it but new technology such as a gopro attached to the top fin of a shark has actually showed that they do haunt through a kelp forest so nowhere is safe oh thousands of dollars right to the ground i promise you no shark is big enough to get an anchor stuck to it and be able to pull multiple people and other giant structures with it but it's pretty cool to see in cgi if an anchor got stuck on a shark this shark would probably die at least nowadays unless it was like a whale shark or something which is one of the bigger sharks that are out there now so there's a myth around sharks that all sharks need to constantly keep swimming in order to breathe that's not true actually for every single species of shark there are some sharks that can actually lay down on the ground and open and close their mouths in something that's called ram ventilation and force water to come into their mouths out of their gills and have the gills actually extract the oxygen that way and so for some sharks like a great white or a megalodon you would have to consistently keep swimming in order to breathe and to live i'm very surprised that nobody realizes there's a giant mass swimming underneath [Music] them so this is what you don't want to do when someone screams shark and that's splash about and cause a lot of chaos one of the big rules that we have in order to swim safely in the ocean is to always swim with a body and so you want to have a buddy with you to be able to look around make sure you know if there is a shark keep an eye on it but you also want to make sure that you don't cause more attention on yourself and that means a lot of splashing at the top a lot of erratic swimming because that to a shark actually sounds like something that a wounded fish or wounded animal would actually do so if you're trying to get away from a shark try to have control of your swimming and always remember it's not the shark that you see that's sometimes the problems it's sometimes the one you don't see how do they lose such a big shark there you go so in modern history the largest shark that has ever been recorded is probably a whale shark they get up to 40 feet long or about like 12 meters would a shark ever approach that many people depends on how timid the shark is there are some species of sharks that are quite shy for example hammerhead sharks don't like bubbles that scuba divers give off and you usually have to like hold your breath or be on something that's called a rebreather that doesn't put out bubbles in order to swim with hammerhead sharks but i don't think a shark would actually go around and be around that many people unless it knew that there was food around and it was really really hungry china does have sharks asia in general does have sharks was megalodon one of them we don't know it's full range but i don't believe we found any megalodon teeth or other fossils to indicate that it has been in that area in central america they found what they believe was actually a megalodon nursery ground which is another reason as to why people were like megalodon is 100 extinct because it's nursery is above the water now shark ages very very very wildly so anywhere from 10 20 years to if you're a greenland shark you've been around for 400 plus years for megalodon shark we're not 100 sure though what its life expectancy was what we've just seen with them lowering the machine and the i'm assuming it kind of looks like a hydrophone which emits like the dolphin noise and the whale noise that's not something that happens i've never heard of anyone using that as a shark repellent or as a shark deterrent dolphins and whales actually eat the same exact stuff as sharks so if those animals are round usually a shark's around too there have been reports of dolphins and whales head butting and driving away sharks but don't always count on it next up we've got lara croft tomb raider cradle of life [Music] that was very quick all right so what she just did is cut herself in order to attract a shark to come closer to her usually it doesn't happen this instantaneously and to be honest if you cut yourself in real life chances of you attracting a shark are actually very very slim you have a bigger chance of probably contracting an infection in the water than you are of attracting a shark but anything from a minute amount might be able to kind of pick up their senses and perk their senses and be like oh something's bleeding i should probably go check it out and eat it this one kind of seems to be like a tiger shark but without the stripes so i'm not the biggest fan of it because it's without the stripes you know that noise that the shark made that hiss noise sharks don't make noises like that they actually don't make noises at all really except if you're some species of sharks like dog sharks you take them out of the water and they're known to bark as they release air out that sounded more cat-like than shark-like yeah that's a great way of deterring a shark but have you ever tried punching something underwater before you're usually quite slow there's a bit of drag whereas sharks they're literally built to not have drag they're covered in something that's called dermal denticles and it actually kind of makes them quite hydrodynamic i probably wouldn't punch a shark in the snout just because your hand might actually end up down its throat instead try to aim for the eyes or even better aim for those gill slits on the side that's where it breathes basically it's almost as if you were sucker punching someone in the lungs it's gonna take their breath away they're not gonna like it they're probably gonna go away the shirt teeth aren't exactly the best um it doesn't look completely realistic especially how the the shark kind of like almost yawns in a way after laura has punched it in the mouth and it kind of shakes his head and goes away yeah sharks will shake their head and kind of go away but the whole yawning bit isn't as often seen in sharks some species yeah tiger sharks not as much so it's a really good thing that she has gloves on i don't know if you guys have ever felt a shark but how many of you guys have felt sandpaper very similar and it hurts when you rub up against it and that's the same exact thing with sharks so if you rub up the wrong way we actually have a term for this in shark science called shark burn those fingers yeah are definitely going to be feeling the burn quite literally also don't do this please don't ride sharks it's so so bad for them not only are you stressing the animal out but it could turn around and bite you and that's not good for you is it realistic that laura croft held her breath for so long yes it's actually something that's called freediving and it's quite common a lot of people can actually dive to deep deaths in the ocean without taking a single breath quite advanced level skills and it's something that i really wish i had but my lungs suck so i can't one of the things that i love personally about tiger sharks on top of everything else because they're my favorite shark is the nickname that they have of trash cans of the sea and that's because they're pretty and discriminatory of what they eat everything from chicken wire tnt suits of armor tires license plates they really don't care and aren't that picky next up couples retreat and you're too busy complaining about your problems to enjoy all these beautiful little fish i wish there was an experience like this where you could float by something and just feed fish but it doesn't exist because it's dangerous as hell sure what jason okay it's all happening the one thing i don't understand is why are people always surprised when there's a shark in the ocean like if the sharks showed up in your bathtub sure have this reaction but like you're throwing dead animals into the ocean what did you think was gonna pop up flipper well if life is circling our lives right now do not move do not panic move but gently and without panic marcel i need you to take the french out of your mouth and tell me what to do don't let them see your fear don't let him see your fear that's very good advice because sharks can actually detect your heart rate going up so do try to stay calm don't worry these are only lemon sharks this is all part of the core so supposedly these are lemon sharks but they don't look like lemon sharks to me it actually looks more like some sort of reef shark the size of the shark for those smaller reef sharks is pretty accurate if not maybe a little bit on the smaller size don't do that don't don't spill chub on your mate don't do that for those who don't know chumming essentially is what we kind of just saw of just having a bucket full of blood fish cuts and oil and bits of fish that you kind of like take out one by one and kind of get it in a nice soupy mixture to attract sharks to come closer to you it's not something that we tell people to do but also scientists do use it for scientific research purposes such as tagging a shark or doing a fin id what he should probably do is get out of the blood let's get out of the champ but slowly swim slowly out the chance that is very good i like him i like this french dude he is giving good advice get out of the chum slowly don't panic they're torturing me they're playing with me they're slow playing me shut up slowly that is not staying calm that's panicking the stop and start tactic i don't really know if it would help her hurt because if the shark wants to go at you it doesn't matter if you stop it's gonna know you're there it's not gonna be like oh it's stopped moving i don't know where it went all of a sudden like it knows you're there go to shore it's too late hey it's only a matter of time there's no no sharks around you honey if you notice on that last bit where he's kind of far away from the sharks all of them are just in that one bucket and that's all that they were really curious about was the blood would that happen in real life possibly word of advice is just don't have a bucket of chums slammed on top of you because you don't want to take any chances next up we've got 47 meters down uncaged all right so a few things right off the bat they're supposed to be in fresh water and there are some shark species that are in fresh water they don't look like this or get that big and it seems like the shark is all supposed to be blind that's why it's got that milky covering over its eyes we haven't really seen that in many shark species either the only sharks that i've ever seen that are partially blind are actually greenland sharks when they have these little parasites or copepods off of their eyes and it does kind of give them like a milky look but definitely not like that so far seems pretty unrealistic but from what i'm seeing it looks like it has five gill slits so that's anatomically correct are there a lot of sharks that are in caves not that i've heard of a couple of years ago it actually made international news that there were some sharks that were found in like an underwater volcano even though it's very unrealistic that there's this many sharks let alone in a cave area who does maybe we just haven't discovered any yet [Music] the shark doesn't really look like any shark to me it seems like someone took a bunch of like different pieces of sharks and made it into this like zombie looking shark it almost looks like a makeup or a poor beagle shark but that's just like their little face and their body feature looks like that you wouldn't really be able to see a shark coming towards you if it's coming from underneath um depending i guess on the life jacket if you've got a really puffy one you're lucky to see your own toes so as the people are treading around you can kind of see the sharks are swimming around them circling them that is something that sharks do what they're doing kind of while they're circling you is not only using their ampullae blur and zeni to figure out all right are you like are you alive are you giving off electrical little minute pulses but they're also looking at you as well that's what they're doing with their eyes mostly is looking at you to figure out what shape you are and if your food or if there's something that you've never seen before this shark is blind so i don't know what the heck it's doing well i haven't seen any research being done on what attracts a shark more in regards to noise is it more at the surface or more underwater but i would think at the surface just because you have that splashing noise that can kind of travel farther i think than say underwater you don't have as much and usually when you've got some sort of injured animal they do kind of float up to the surface however because she slammed down that noise probably did attract them to the source of it they saw her or sensed her there with their superpower blind shark powers those are some terrifying last moments for her um there have been some cases especially for surfers that have shown a shark actually go for like the rib area and whatnot so that is possible yes i have never been bitten by a shark but while i was filming for shark week a few years ago scuba diving underwater i was actually bitten by a 10-foot american crocodile and i've got the scars in the story to prove it that actually was so deep that i could fit my pinky up to about there on every single one of those bite wounds i guess you can kind of take a little bit of solace in that knowing that a person who works actively with sharks like pretty regularly has never been bit by a shark so your chances are quite low will two sharks fight over a person and then tear them in half like that probably not very unrealistic usually there's kind of like a hierarchy for sharks when it comes to feeding often times if one is kind of nibbling the others kind of stand back until it's engorged itself and then they go in in that hierarchical order they respect their elders and their big sharks next up we've got deep lucy i've never seen a setup like this for a shark before i will say that so we don't have any like underwater labs like is shown here but we do have some lab spaces that are near water so we can actually bring sharks into an enclosure similar to this but not with all the high-tech kind of gear we do have some sharks that we keep in enclosures and do tests on medical tests even where we take blood hemoglobin and some skin tissues our labs might not look like this but they're still pretty cool membrane integrity is improving then they're firing they're firing if anything's going to be the most unrealistic part of this movie it's going to be that is scientific results coming out that quickly yes sharks are actually used in for medical purposes um not so much alzheimer's to my knowledge but in other ways they're more predominantly used it's called bioinspiration using things that we find in nature in other parts of our life for example sharkskin has actually inspired not only swimsuits that were banned in the olympics but also the design of airplane wings so medically there is quite a lot out there that sharks are starting to help with especially because a lot of people are curious as to how their immune system holds up and how powerful the immune system can be introducing two cc's of the protein complex so while this scene does show sharks it's not all about shark science it's mostly about the medical side and what they can use sharks for uh but that's actually not everything that shark scientists can do we have kind of our own different paths of or niches if you will of expertise and so for me completely different from this i actually look at habitat use of sharks so figuring out why sharks are where they are using technology such as drones or something that is called grubs baited remote underwater video cameras essentially it's like a gopro with a little treat bag at the end to entice the shark to come a little bit closer so i can get a look at it id it and figure out if that habitat has any significance such as a nursery they're like fire they're fart shark brains are really hard to come by because you need dead sharks for that even though it's not my expertise there are some people who are out there studying these brains but it's such a complex organ we barely understand our brain it's really hard to wrap our minds around another animal's very complex brain um sharks they can swim actually that kind of side to side motion so it is very important that you tie your sharks down properly now are you supposed to use those kind of ropes no there's special ropes that we use for sharks yeah the the rope is not well placed whatsoever so a lot of times for ropes if we're gonna loop one around the shark we also try to loop one around one of the fins as well so it doesn't like swim away without us like making sure it's good to go so the rope job here is quite bad but sometimes we actually put covers over the eyes so it doesn't freak out you actually do this with quite a lot of wild animals so i'm a bit surprised they didn't have it on here but also not that surprised because it's a movie that the guy is in the water with him and the shark isn't actually doing anything to the guy can be a bit normal just because maybe it's out of the shark's vision it doesn't really care that much about it but because that one guy was in front of his vision that's why i kind of went around and went chomp because it's like oh i see you i'm unhappy i'm gonna take it out on you yes it does look like a mako shark congratulations it even got the teeth right because the teeth they almost look like needles and they're pointed backwards because they eat a lot of slippery fish and so the teeth pointed backwards help it not move around as much so good job people do you see how there's multiple rows that is accurate quite a lot of shark species do have those rows of teeth that when one tooth in the front falls off another one kind of is like a conveyor belt it comes forward and takes its place i think on average it's like 30 000 though uh teeth in a lifetime which is a lot they don't get this big as you can see it seems like it's a pretty big enclosure that it's in and compared to the man that you kind of see on the edge that was in the water with this shark that's just not possible sharks are pretty smart as they as they kind of are they've been around for millions of years but as we've kind of said their brains are something that we're just beginning to understand so trying to kind of equate smartness to a shark is really hard to do but we know they're really excellent predators and what they've been doing for a while has worked i don't know if making them smarter would make them more aggressive i think it might make them more cunning hunters though and might make them have a little bit of a temper and be fed up with people poking them next up we've got ace ventura pet detective that is not usually an outfit we marine biologists where will we go to feed our pet sharks i've got a little snack for you [Music] so in that small tank probably is not going to be able to breach upwards kind of how you saw in the film it might be able to like lift itself up a bit but not much it does need a little bit of room to be able to propulsion itself up to propel itself upwards out of the water most times when a great white shark is reaching it usually goes like this or like that way there's a lot more splashing a lot more area needed for an animal to be able to reach definitely can see that it's a great white shark there would you have it as a pet no not even aquariums are good at keeping great white sharks in captivity in fact monterey bay aquarium is one of the few that has actually kept them and for a very short amount of time it's very very hard to keep great white sharks in captivity mostly because they keep ramming into the edges of the aquariums they do not like captivity whatsoever just a tidbit while it's not illegal to own sharks in your own personal aquarium it's actually quite hard not only a to get a shark such as a great white to keep but also some of them are protected so you can't own them uh and it's not really the smartest thing you want to do anyways not only does the animal get a lesser quality of life but you're gonna have to pay a lot of money to keep up with how much a great white shark feeds your snowflake i've got a little snack for you one thing that the shark wouldn't be able to just automatically know is that ace venture is actually holding a fish you need to throw a few in there in order to get the shark's attention in it realizing that you actually have fish in your hands and that you're feeding it [Music] no the way that you see ace venture kind of flailing about and being held in the jaws of this great white shark there is no way he would be able to walk away without any injuries whatsoever very very unlikely that would happen and probably impossible don't try it at home to prove me right or wrong please next up we've got the shallows so i will give props to the shadows they have a very realistic looking great white shark there is no denying it tired of seeing shirts that look more like dolphins or as someone has like frankenstein picked and put sharks together and made it look like some brand new species that i would never want to see in the dark ocean let alone a dark alley you didn't like that because it stings like jellyfish okay a great white shark would not be just chilling in the coral reefs they're more of open ocean water animals so the likelihood of them running into a coral reef and still sticking around in order to get one piece of prey very very unlikely you see a lot of jellyfish in this movie in this specific scene there can be a lot of jellyfish so many in one area actually that it's just i mean you cannot can't even see water it's a bit gnarly they don't glow like this either this like ethereal angelic thing that's very rare some species do glow um some of them have like little rainbow tendrils which is really cool like they can glow but like that no yeah that's gonna hurt i've been stuck by jellyfish before like in the face and stuff that hurts [Music] okay so what you see here the shark kind of like swimming away from the jellyfish it hasn't been like scientifically tested or anything but i can tell you that sharks don't care about jellyfish if they really want something they will swim through the jellyfish to get to it they've got pretty tough skin made out of dermal tentacles which actually translates to tiny teeth it helps reduce pain as well as like drag as you can see it's doing more pain and damage to her than it is the shark great white sharks believe it or not do not like orcas orcas are a big time predator for great white sharks usually the orcas actually target the shark's liver and sometimes it's claspers which are the male reproductive organs for great white sharks once a great white shark has been bitten by an orca usually the great white sharks in the surrounding area will leave for a little bit so become best friends with an orca call out for them when a great white shark is nearby and who knows maybe they might help you out oh yeah she's got some serious shark burn right there she stabbed it give her props for that it is very hard like it is hard to get a tag through the door so like to the dorsal fin of the shark let alone stab it with like a rusty stare bit so i will give blake lively props for that to be able to stab through a shark's very tough skin uh when she fell on the shark she's probably going to be covered in that shark burn too so i feel really bad for her she's in a world of hurt right now she's got jellyfish thing she's been just absolutely obliterated by coral now she's got shark burn she she's not having a good job would a sheriff jump up to get a prey item like that once it's on some sort of like structure or whatever possibly i've never seen it happen none of my colleagues have ever seen it happen so i want to say very unlikely that this scenario here is realistic great white sharks are cosmopolitan animals that means you see them in all sorts of oceans of all of our oceans really would they be this close to shore possibly uh especially if there's a dead whale carcass and this is actually something that can happen yes would it stick around for tons and tons of time probably not and this has happened before in like hawaii and other pacific islands and it does attract sharks to come closer and usually officials do say stay away from the dead whale and the surrounding area because it does attract sharks i haven't heard of anyone being bitten by a shark when there was a whale carcass in the area but i think that's because most people have common enough sense to not be in the water with something that is essentially ringing a big dinner bell sharks are definitely not vindictive as it has been portrayed in this movie um they don't hold a grudge promise as you can see the portrayal of sharks and movies isn't always the best they need a little bit of a pr manager because even though they're portrayed as these scary monsters that's not actually the truth you don't have to worry about an ocean filled with sharks instead you should be worried about an ocean without them thanks so much for watching these clips with me i'll see you next time

Channel: GQ

Views: 1,989,517

Rating: 4.9414639 out of 5

Keywords: the breakdown, breakdown, melissa marquez, melissa marquez sharks, shark movie, shark movies, shark attack, shark attack scene, shark attack movie, shark scenes, shark movies breakdown, jaws shark, deep blue sea shark, the meg shark, tomb raider shark, couples retreat shark, 47 meters down shark, ace ventura shark, the shallows shark, the breakdown sharks, shark, sharks, shark attacks, best shark movies, best shark movie, jaws breakdown, marine bioligist, gq, gq magazine

Id: GhgmGZWGFKk

Length: 36min 38sec (2198 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 14 2020