Shark Divers - One of the World's Most Dangerous Jobs | Free Documentary Nature

[Music] there are people who study photograph and interact with dangerous sharks and they don't use a cage it's their job but perhaps your worst nightmare a select group of skilled professionals routinely work with the animals from massive cold water sharks in canada to great whites in mexico and south africa the tiger sharks in the bahamas even the biggest fish in the sea the whale shark attracts a devoted following and you can now scuba dive with them in the world's largest aquarium shark divers are a diverse and eclectic group few are adrenaline junkies while many are passionate conservationists and others are simply fascinated some say obsessed with shots i love my job a handful of these divers have survived brutal shark attacks shark divers enthusiasm and their fear can be highly contagious believe it or not scuba diving with dangerous sharks is big business they're more popular than ever [Music] in 2008 the first tourist who paid for the privilege of an open water shark encounter was killed by a bull shark [Music] have we finally taken this adrenaline-fueled sport a bit too far [Music] [Music] many scuba divers are asked if they're afraid of sharks they're frightening creatures to most of us but for some people getting close to dangerous sharks is exactly what they're hoping for [Music] simply swimming in the ocean means we've become part of the food chain you can say the same about a walk in the woods but at least we're in our element above the water for shark divers there is something primal and enticing about entering an alien world where sea monsters lurk perhaps the best place to scuba dive with one of the most dangerous sharks is in the atlantic ocean in a remote corner of the bahamas [Music] in the tropics there isn't a bigger or badder predator than the tiger shark in terms of the number of attacks on humans and fatalities they are second only to great whites the largest one ever caught was 24 feet long it's a contender with the great white as the largest predatory fish in the sea at west palm beach florida shark diver magazine publisher eli martinez has organized a one-week expedition to the northern bahamas to scuba dive with big sharks a former rodeo cowboy martinez suffered a career-ending injury shortly after turning profession he then took his passion for dangerous animals to a new extreme i spent six years riding bulls and doing the rodeo circuit and it was on one of my stops when i when i got my pro permit and i started going to pro events that i cracked my hip and i was out for two months so i decided to get my diving certification and went on a dive trip and i'm dropping down and i saw a shark and that was it basically uh hung up my spurs literally and and i started chasing sharks after that [Music] after motoring overnight from the florida coast and clearing bohemian immigration the liveaboard diving vessel dolphin dream headed north to remote tiger beach captain wayne smith is credited with discovering tiger beach and first introducing scuba divers to tiger sharks i've been coming out here 27 years now and we came to this area and anchored up because it was a shallow protected area sometimes at night we'd have some dead carcasses and we'd throw them in the water and they'd come up and start feeding on them and after a while there's got to be such high demand for people wanting to see tiger sharks that we started running these trips everybody uh welcome to tiger beach as you can see we already have a bunch of lemon sharks swimming around we prefer everybody diving too so that somebody can watch your back while you're in the water once you jump in just keep your hands here don't start waving them around or splashing other than that we already got sharks here the pool is open got to get in there this is what we nutty people do here's what it's for my jailhouse tat i didn't actually get it in jail any last words neil look after my wife and children when i started wearing the hat was to save my hair and it kind of became my trademark so i never die without it the only time i don't is when it's really really cold i gotta wear a hoodie but i'm still trying to figure out how i can make that work dozens of lemon sharks are a constant presence at tiger beach they're not generally considered aggressive but they are implicated in over 20 non-fatal attacks on humans many sharks including lemons can be dangerous given the right conditions a beautiful animal with piercing cat-like eyes they are part of the requiem family which includes other well-known species such as tiger and blue sharks the animal everyone is here to see is the tiger shark although not endangered they are very rarely encountered while scuba diving it takes some time for the tiger sharks to venture in from the fringing coral reef they seem at first to be relatively uninterested in the divers or the lemon sharks but on the first dive of the first day tiger sharks eventually came closer and made their presence known in a big way so [Music] holy crap man i've done some scary my day but that one takes the cake you didn't want to know what was happening behind you did they followed me up i was rolling i wanted came right behind you tiger yeah i always took a little chew on your tank there's nothing i could do about it [Applause] first dive first day of the trip i got bumped by two or three tiger sharks right in the lens coming right at me you were turned away from me and this big tiger shirt came swinging around and he was coming toward me and i'm kind of backing off back and off then he swung in behind you and i guess for some reason he decided your tank was something you'd like to investigate so he he went up and he just kind of mouthed it a little bit and you're oblivious to the whole thing of course those are big rather uh impressive looking sharks i gotta say that most divers rarely see sharks the animals don't make a habit of venturing close to humans with scuba tanks breathing compressed air is a noisy affair and our relatively large size usually scares them away to the sharks here however we're just another big predator down there for the same reason they are for the food we get our fish from the fish market the stuff they were going to throw away we feed that to the sharks so it's a win-win for everybody we recycle what they were going to normally throw away in the trash bin go through about 250 300 pounds of bait per day get a variety of bait a lot of what we get is uh what the fish houses have left over heads and backbones after they sell to the restaurants and the public and then we also get our some bait from some of the local fishing boats that get in these bonitas which are real oily and bloody and they're not a food fish nobody eats them as foods they make excellent bait we constantly have to adapt the way we're feeding them because they're clever little devils one of the ways we do that is with wrangling we tend to get them excited there at the surface we just get the lemons thrashing around because they're so easy to get the bait and that thrashing around is what's bringing the tigers in these days [Music] you want big sharks you use big bait we're prepping a grouper head and what we're going to do is we're going to wrangle in the sharks we're going to hang this out the back and try to attract the tigers to the boat we use big heads like this because if we use smaller pieces of fish well the the sharks will kind of take it away real quick they got a real thick bone in their head so we can last with this one piece of bait and it'll keep us there for a while [Music] oh [Music] the lemons have kind of dominated this place but they're definitely smaller in the pecking order when the tigers come in and they want to feed you know there's nothing going to stop them the lemons will definitely give them away especially when a big 12 14 foot tiger comes in you know the lemons will leave and get out of there the big boss here has got to be the tiger shark absolutely you could see here that if a tiger shark can get his lower jaw on the bottom of this crate and he'll just snap it in half that's what he did here one of the things that we're noticing is that these sharks have a learned behavior at least the tiger shark where we've taken our crates down there and we're hanging them and the tigers have learned to chew through the ropes that we have these crates hanging from so that they can grab these crates and swim off with them and at their leisure figure way to get inside to the bait that we have hanging and yeah it's definitely a learned a behavior of local bahamians coming off one of the small islands out there uh spear fishing i don't think he knows this is tiger shark infested waters and these guys are out there fishing about that's extreme that's as so what do spear gnarly as it gets jeez i love my job another day at the office oh yeah beats riding bulls huh are you kidding me [Applause] eli martinez has found a unique niche in the scuba diving world his magazine shark diver appeals to both armchair shark enthusiasts and to those looking for a slightly more hands-on approach after the magazine started the reader trips kind of evolve people start asking us where do we go diving maybe they can meet up with us or when's our next adventure i organized our first shark trip and worked really well and we had a blast out there in the real world you know you tell someone you're a shark diver and everybody thinks you're crazy here all these crazy people can get together and no one thinks you're crazy anymore martinez frequently dives with aggressive sharks and has many hair-raising video clips from his expeditions mako sharks are particularly fast and frightening and have very sharp teeth well here you can see the bite marks this is actually after my last mako shark dive makos are one of the few sharks that don't bump divers with a mouth closed they actually go at diver's mouth open you can see the gouges from sharks as they really bite into the glass as the week progressed the action at tiger beach ramped up way up aggressive baiting and chumming were perhaps a bit too successful a handful of tiger sharks became increasingly more bold eli had to eventually use his camera as a defensive tool to protect some of the divers sharks don't have hands or fingers so they sometimes ram or nudge objects out of curiosity and in worst-case scenarios they may take an exploratory bite this is what it's all about this is what you hoped for you know that was hairy jesus christ i may have drifted into the other divers that were there but i turned around and i'm looking straight at the face of a tiger shark and he wasn't a small one either those sharks came in they came in hard and and uh it was it was intense it got pretty got hairy there for a little while i think eli was trying to come in to protect me because i'm filming one this other one comes in it was just it got extremely hairy that's what you really want you know everybody came back nobody got hurt and everybody's got a big smile on their face reviewing his tape after the last dive at tiger beach eli's video camera revealed an encounter that could have seriously gone wrong this is one sequence destined for the highlight reel pucker factory that is what shark diving is all about that's what extreme shark diving is all about that was an outstanding dive absolutely outstanding tigers four tigers uh nipping at the tanks biting the cage the uh the food cage uh i was saying that's what it's all about that's that's why we came out here so huge adrenaline rush huge shock divers are a very small but growing community in the scuba diving world they are a passionate group and many are staunch advocates for shark conservation but are they crazy and do they take their hobby a bit too far it's exciting to get in and watch a shark in its natural habitat and i did a lot of reef diving in that and it kind of got boring after a while and kind of wanted to start getting to the big stuff and get a little excitement back into it it's partly an adrenaline rush um but it goes a lot farther than that it's hard to describe until you've actually dove with one or swam with one um they're just such beautiful animals they're so graceful and powerful you know the more you know about them the less you fear them and diving with tiger sharks is great i have done skydiving i have done some mountain climbing i do mountain biking but nothing compares to it nothing compares to shark diving that intense adrenaline rush you get when you first see you see a big shark in the water much less 10 or 15. i've been diving for a lot of years a lot of different places and i've experienced a lot of different kinds of sharks but tiger sharks are right up there in the pucker factor i mean first big one you see it's like whoa shark divers have a need for a little adrenaline rush and you can kind of see it during these shark dives if it's it's a real mellow shark dive they're not real excited but boy when the sharks get excited the people get excited you take someone that's never been in the water with a shark before that has a positive experience in the water they're going to come out as shark advocates and they're going to be fighting for these animals and they're going to talk about them in a different light and that's extremely important because you know the world still looks at sharks as the only good shark is a dead shark at the end of my days you know i would love to look back in my life and say you know what i saved a bunch of sharks i did my part and some sharks are still swimming out in the ocean there's no doubt sharks have an image problem raise your sharp teeth the icy stair bloody feeding frenzies it's no wonder they bring such a woeful reputation and after all they do occasionally kill people no species has worse public relations issues than great whites and no sharks are more popular with shark divers [Music] about 250 miles west of mexico's baja peninsula is the remote volcanic island of guadalupe [Music] from the port city of ensenada it's a journey of nearly 24 hours on the open ocean to reach guadalupe approaching the intimidating coastline of the island the first order of business is to prepare the shark cages [Music] keep lots of tension on that line okay this is the one that's like a jigsaw puzzle here we go that's it just rotate it around a little bit more please about a thousand pounds of cage over overlooking here in open ocean with a wee bit of a swell going oh my goodness just beautiful we put the cages in at night as soon as we get here we like to get everything all organized and in the water just in case there's any kind of problems it's nice to get everything tied up and get the chum slick started and make sure the white sharks know that we're here we're ready for business at six o'clock tomorrow morning guadalupe is an arid and desolate outpost in the open pacific towering cliffs and rugged mountains rise over 4 000 feet from sea level [Music] 19th century whalers brought goats to guadalupe as a source of fresh meat the animals multiplied as intended and eventually destroyed most of the islands flora and fauna [Music] today some of the few original inhabitants that remain are fur seals sea lions and elephant seals and life here must be harsh this is the realm of the great white [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] in the late 1990s long-range fishing boats targeting tuna near guadalupe began reporting the great whites were attacking their catches words spread like a chum slick come on here he comes oh beautiful [Applause] the industry started here in uh 2000 when a boat called the horizon showed up and uh they had heard stories about sport fishing boats not being able to bring their fish in because the white sharks were taking all the tuna more white sharks than anyone had seen anywhere so we came down here on a whim i wanted to see white sharks off the back of the boat but uh we got down here i jumped in the water i saw these enormous beautiful sharks i couldn't believe how fantastic they were it was just an amazing experience and at that point i knew that i wanted to keep on doing this it was just no question in my mind and we wrapped up from two trips that first year to nine to ten trips a year [Music] like the sharks at tiger beach great whites at guadalupe need to be coaxed with bait and nothing piques their interest like tuna [Music] shark baiting 101 you make it smelly you make it bloody you make it oily you get all this good yummy stuff you mix it up with your fingers and scrunch it up to get lots of blood you make sure that you use animals that are endemic to the islands mackerel and tuna and we start a chum slick we do it in a very non-invasive way but we make it as smelly and yucky as we possibly can one way to make sure that your chum is nice and fresh take a little bit of chum just like this and we'll see what the mackerel and the water do whoa look at that seagulls mackerel and a feeding frenzy that is fresh tuna it's one thing to see a great white on television or from the safe confines of a boat it's another experience entirely to see the animals in their natural element there simply isn't a single creature on earth that we're more afraid of [Music] [Music] [Music] i just couldn't believe how big they are and how beautiful they are i mean they're just they're not not at all ferocious looking they look like they're smiling at you until they open their mouths [Music] the inaugural children's trip at guadalupe included three kids from mexico and mike and marianne lieber's own children charlie and emily [Music] [Music] this arrow [Music] i know it's heavy but once you get in the water you won't really feel it it kind of helps you sink a little how does that feel [Music] so how many sharks do you think you're going to see supplies [Music] all the way down [Music] it didn't take long for the children to get the hang of breathing from a regulator and once they started spotting sharks the biggest challenge was dragging the kids out of the water [Music] i don't recall what i was doing at six years old but i wasn't diving with white sharks i think it was like riding my tricycle around the street or something like that well done that was great charlie someone else's turned out okay i know charlie did not want to come up every time a shark would come by charlie be the first guy to go oh there's a shark right over there he just did a fantastic job i am so proud of him i think he's just had an experience that he's never ever gonna forget i don't think any of them have had any trepidation at all it's been fantastic they've been in the cages they've seen the sharks they've tried to help out on the boat they want to throw the bait they want to do everything i mean that's you know if they go until 10 kids and 10 more kids it can't be any better than that nope nope i was freezing i wanted to come out she didn't want to come out i gotta go to the bathroom and she won't come out and i kept saying up she's like nope nope we um some kids out here we're just wrapping the trip and it succeeded beyond my wildest expectation every kid every one of them got in the cages ended up spending hours and hours in the cages we had to drag these shivering little five and six year olds out of the water after an hour or two because they didn't want to come up they just loved watching the sharks going by and i can't wait to find out what happens when they get home when they start telling their friends dr mauricio hoyos is fascinated with great whites there's no permanent research facilities on the island so he teams up with tour boats as a ship's naturalist he's particularly excited to be working on this inaugural children's trip when i was kid i remember that we went to the united states and my father gave me twenty dollars and he told me okay this is all the money that i'm going to give you you have to buy a lot of toys or whatever you want and there was this small shark and it was twenty dollars i bought it because i really wanted and my father was really upset because he told me hey that's all your money you have to you can buy a lot of different toys no no i want that talk and i still have it because since i was a little kid i loved sharks [Music] when i saw the first shark it was like the dream of my life came true it was amazing it was a huge female maybe four meters long and since then i have been working here on this island every every autumn [Music] to gain a better understanding of the shark's local movements and their long-distance migrations mauricio utilizes high-tech tools such as satellite tags and acoustic transmitters these devices reveal startling data about how deep the sharks travel in search of prey he's observed that smaller great whites at guadalupe eat mainly tuna rays and other sharks while the older and larger white sharks eat seals and sea lions [Music] it would be extremely hazardous to acquire dna samples or to implant transmitting devices in open water free swimming with great whites would be a challenge and a bit risky okay shut bring it bring it put it right here right here [Music] okay excellent [Music] outfitted with an acoustic or satellite tag the sharks reveal their depths migratory movements and locations and even water temperatures [Applause] at guadalupe mauricio uses acoustic technology to track local sharks the white sharks at guadalupe spend more than half of the year away from the island in open water between california and hawaii but what they're doing way out there remains a mystery a few great whites have been satellite tracked to a remote region in the middle of the pacific dubbed the great white cafe it's thought that thousands of the sharks congregate each year at the mysterious spot whether they're mating chasing tuna or even giving birth no one is sure for such a remarkably well-known creature we actually know very little about them but mauricio hoyos is determined to find out more well the church is not here maybe we can go a little bit okay with the luxury of well-appointed tour boats and their state-of-the-art shark cages mauricio can also observe the sharks underwater photo id is another tool in the young researcher's arsenal each shark has unique markings scars and patterns with a bit of luck hoyos will have many more seasons at guadalupe to answer some of the questions surrounding these intriguing animals guadalupe is a protected biosphere of mexico but with minimal funding or monitoring of the waters surrounding the island the sharks are under constant threat from poachers a set of mature white shark fins can fetch upwards of 25 000 and an intact jaw is an extremely valuable prize it's an uphill battle convincing impoverished fishermen or foreign fishing fleets that white sharks here are more valuable alive than dead i love these animals i really do these white sharks are amazing the last three days i've had my five-year-old son and my seven-year-old daughter in the water with them and it was just a thrill and i can only hope that the sharks are still going to be here for them and for their kids and their kids kids nothing could have given me a greater thrill than to spend an hour and a half in the water with charlie this morning having him point out the white sharks to me i'm very very fearful that we're seeing the end of these and that even five years from now or 10 years from now there won't be any sharks left [Music] shark diving is not confined to the tropics or to shallow temperate waters in the dark frigid realm of the deep sea lives a mysterious giant the six-gill shark ancient hunters unchanged since dinosaurs roamed the earth they inhabit great depths these living fossils can attain a length of over 20 feet there are only a handful of places where sixgill sharks are frequently encountered in shallow water washington state's puget sound and the pacific coast of canada one of the best places to photograph and study the sharks at scuba diving depths is british columbia's hornby island [Music] rob zielinski and amanda heath operate a busy scuba diving business on hornby island and sixgills are their number one attraction despite the cold seas and sometimes challenging diving conditions the animals generate enormous interest the main reason that people come to hornby is to see the six scale sharks they're a real draw here in the summer we cater to about 500 diving tourists in the course of may to september and all of those people come with the intent of seeing the sex skills if they're lucky enough to do so hornby island is a unique location in that it's one of the few places in the world where we can observe six gills in water shallow enough to scuba dive in in many cases they're found at depths of several thousand feet which is unreachable by people under most circumstances sport diver tourists come here as well as scientists film crews still photographers etc who are interested in an opportunity to see the sixth gill in its natural habitat [Music] researcher dr robert dunbrack of newfoundland's memorial university searches for clues to the behavior and biology of these enigmatic sharks each summer aboard his research vessel the stalwick dumbbrack travels to tiny flora islet off the coast of hornby island six gills and their unusual habits pose many intriguing questions but simply finding the elusive animals is the first of many [Music] challenges it was much more difficult than we originally thought it might be to work on the six skills we thought we could just do a bit of diving and the six skills would be there and we could make behavioral observations in a way that we might do on let's say polar bears or some sort of terrestrial mammal the study site that we settled on was on floor islets off warmby island we spent a few days there on our research vessel looking for sharks and didn't see anything and we were prepared then to leave and go and find another site but on the our last dive we saw eight sharks and one dive so that as soon as we saw that we decided this was a place to do the work the unanswered question about these sharks of course is why are they coming into shell of water they're deep water sharks they're known virtually throughout all the oceans of the world but only from deep waters a natural thing to conclude is that they're coming in to feed because this is what animals have to do most of the time is look for food but we have no evidence that they are feeding it's not known whether they feed at night and maybe come onto the reef during the day for some other reason dunbrack quickly realized that direct observation of the animals was very difficult depth and time constraints cold water and currents and finally locating the sharks on the deep reef made research a daunting task to aid in his studies he devised two ingenious yet simple methods of observing and recording six skills and their behavior we have built a time-lapse video system that allows us to put a video camera down it takes pictures four frames every 10 seconds or so on a single film we're able to get two to three to four weeks depending on the time of year it's just a daylight system we also have set up a stereo system which consists of two video cameras that are cabled directly to the surface they look over the same area they're facing down off the reef fall and so the sharks will will swim underneath these two cameras and based on the geometry of the cameras we can actually get measurements direct measurements of the size of the sharks as they pass underneath and also there's swimming speed which we can use for metabolic studies all right [Music] [Music] early in the summer field season dunbrack made a curious discovery harbor seals and stellar sea lions pray for other large sharks were interacting with the sixgills video monitors and time-lapse cameras revealed the startling behavior [Music] and what was that that's interesting that's a seal right chasing him i don't believe this wow it's amazing seals directly underneath the sharks sort of coming underneath them is sort of buzzing them six gill sharks are not known to feed on seals or sea lions it appears that the playful mammals are simply curious about their large visitors from the deep [Music] in recent years fossil remains of prehistoric relatives of six gill sharks have been discovered on hornby island [Music] over 25 species of mostly deep water sharks from the cretaceous period have been identified from fossilized remains [Music] fossil shark teeth are very common but they're usually attributed to shallow water species these puzzling clues appear to suggest that sixgills and many other deepwater sharks frequently ventured into shallow seas [Music] within a stone's throw of the site we were watching these sharks swim around there were fossils of the sharks that have been there over 65 million years ago and looking at the teeth of those species they're virtually indistinguishable from the teeth of the fish we're looking at within the last 100 million years or so they probably haven't changed much at all [Music] with the collapse of many traditional commercial fish stocks sixgills were briefly considered a viable new fishery but with little knowledge of their population reproductive and growth rates this ill-conceived plan was put on hold [Music] trying to run a fishery on a species like the sixth gill is very problematic it's a large fish it's certainly long lived and has very low rates of reproduction so the sustainable exploitation rates would be very low so a large shark that might be 60 to 100 years old might fetch just a few dollars whereas we do know for a fact that this species probably brings in several million dollars a year just to the dive tourism ministry as a living resource the more people that interact with the sharks in a passive manner as divers and get a positive experience the better it is really going to be for the shark despite many unanswered questions and an uncertain future six skill sharks inspire tremendous respect from both scientists and scuba divers [Music] rob and i consider ourselves to be very lucky in that we're members of a very small select group that have seen a lot of sex skills swimming in its natural habitat it's something that many people can never dream of doing it's an exciting thing to see this shark moving in its environment it's really hard to describe the feelings that you have when you first encounter them to put it in terrestrial terms it would be similar to going through a hike in the west coast and running into the elephants and the giant sloths that used to live there 12 000 years ago it seems like a throwback to times when animals were bigger and more plentiful on these reefs and it's a very stirring experience there's virtually nothing that we know about this species so anything that we get is going to be useful and there's so much to know it's something that could keep us going for many many many years along the western coast of australia cape range national park and the ningaloo reef stretch for almost 200 miles [Music] perth is a remote city on the edge of a remote continent but that's not where the whale sharks are to find them you must fly another thousand miles north to the tip of the most westerly part of australia this is about as far as you can get from anywhere in australia until 1967 there wasn't much to speak of in cape range except perhaps for a few fishermen the cold war was in full swing and the u.s navy built a submarine communications base on australian soil the radio towers are the tallest man-made structures in the southern hemisphere [Music] the base eventually closed down in the early 90s and the neighboring town of exmouth lost their main employer the economic forecast was grim the whale sharks of course had never left it took a transplanted village doctor from england who loved scuba diving to help sow the seeds of a new industry [Music] i'm a general practitioner i had become very keen on underwater photography and bought myself a small city camera before i went to exmouth and i i was just falling in love with the whole marine environment up there the coral reefs the manta rays dugong sharks all the the creatures that are up there at ningaloo then in one day in march 1983 suddenly after several hours of searching we encountered a really big shark i finally got in the water and swam with it and filmed it and i was ecstatic i was over the moon i mean to swim next to such a huge creature to be able to approach it and get so close it was just a mind-blowing experience [Music] i knew that whale sharks had been seen at ningaloo before occasionally but really nothing had prepared me for the numbers that we would see coming in each autumn and after that first encounter in 1983 we went on in the next two or three weeks to see numerous whale sharks about 20 that season taylor had stumbled onto a remarkable annual event each year from march through june giant whale sharks appeared seemingly out of the blue jeff theorized that for a few short months in the austral fall whale sharks gathered attracted by seasonal spawning events at ningaloo reef he didn't realize the potential of his discovery at the time and even thought about keeping it a secret but his pioneering research and film footage eventually brought the story to the world television networks marine biologists and eventually tourists began flocking to cape range to witness the annual whale shark migration taylor is now considered to be the father of whale shark tourism in western australia in the late 80s a handful of businesses sprang up in the tiny villages of coral bay and exmouth that relied on whale sharks yearly visits animal-based eco-tourism is now the number one industry i have to tell you about a day this season they spotted a very large whale shark our crew estimated it to be probably about 14 meters in length which is just about the length of the boat we go out on from april to july whale sharks are an enormous part of our business they're very important to us as a community and as a dive center we have clients from all over the world and that's especially interesting when you consider how far away we are from everything our season so far has been fantastic we had excellent sharks starting about the beginning of april and we expect them to run until about the third week of july this year my first whale shark was in about 1996 and i see this enormous fish swimming out of the blue and suddenly materializing in front of my eyes it was one of the most incredible experiences i've ever had [Music] in coral bay and neighboring whale sharks are big business [Music] much of the local economy revolves around swimming with the giant fish [Music] today marine conservationist brad norman is joining a diverse group of tourists from around the globe [Music] okay good morning everyone and welcome to exmouth dive center and your wild shark adventure of the day we have had a lot of action out there yesterday we must have started with five or six whale sharks okay yay what's gonna happen this morning is we're gonna hop on to the bus it's gonna take us about 40 minutes are we ready yay [Applause] okay whale sharks are the number one attraction at ningaloo marine park at this time of the year between about april and june there's more than 7 000 tourists per year swimming with whale sharks so it's a really really big industry to the region and it's great to get that many people interested in whale sharks and taking the message about their conservation back to their friends and family the whale sharks are found in deeper water outside the shallow reef smaller skiffs ferry the tourists out to the dive boats waiting just off shore for brad norman the people on this whale shark watching trip are more than just tourists they're research assistants helping to unlock the mysteries of this fascinating animal swimming with whale sharks that's what people come here to do but there are strict guidelines the maximum number of divers in the water at one time and the minimum safe distance from the animals once you seen the shark you've moved to the side okay you'll be in front of it it'll come towards you move to one side and then turn around and just start swimming alongside the whale show hey guys i've got a whale shark down here okay hands up in group one one two three four five six seven two more who else in group one okay quickly okay go go [Music] the guide's up raised arm indicates the shark's position this is the perfect opportunity for the group to swim alongside a whale shark but you have to move fast so little was known about whale sharks around the world and i got to reading about them i've been to ningaloo and i was helping with some other research on fish heard about the whale sharks and got very interested in trying to learn more about them then the opportunity came up where i could swim with a whale shark for the first time and it really was one of the most amazing experiences i can remember jumping in the water into the deep blue in about 90 or 100 meters and looking under the water trying to see something coming at me and then all of a sudden out of the glue came this massive massive creature i mean the size of a bus it was it literally was a bus underwater coming towards me and i was just shell-shocked i was just looking at it go past and it was so graceful and so beautiful it really made me really want to help this species as much as i could [Music] fantastic that was huge that was massive that's how we're keeping over there it's unbelievable it's one of the best experiences of my life really no it's really amazing [Applause] [Music] basically how the aerial spotting works is the planes go up and spot for the boats crews along the reef search various grid patterns and then when we find a shark we'll call the boats give them a position on the reef and then basically talk them into the shark using the clock code so 12 o'clock at uh say four or five boat links for the boats and talk them in through through about 400 metres into the shark and onto the shark and they take over once they get a visual a small fleet of planes takes to the skies each morning during whale shark season [Applause] it would be difficult for dive boats to find the animals without aerial spotting even though the sharks are frequently at the surface they don't breach or surface for air like whales do all right yeah beautiful mate uh yeah i've got a visual that's great okay guys go go i knew the threats facing whale sharks i knew there were species in trouble being a marine biologist and somebody very interested in the oceans it seemed to be a perfect match to to save trying to help save the the largest fish in the sea whale sharks are such a difficult species to study really because they do roam the oceans 70 of the planets water and we just can't really keep an eye on everything there's niches that are important to them we don't know where those important spots are to protect them [Music] another day another whale shark but which one has it been to ningaloo before has it been seen and identified before brad norman and other researchers had noticed that every whale shark had a different configuration of white spots scars and marks we knew that whale sharks have spots and lines all over their body possibly could be used to identify individuals it was a case of actually refining that thought when you're working with thousands and thousands of photographs it becomes unworkable to try to match things up by eye brad photographs the pattern of spots adding to a growing database of images that identify individual animals [Music] science and conservation depends on data and for whale sharks photography is a primary tool like a human fingerprint each animal has its own distinct pattern of spots the patterns are complex but there's something similar in the night sky the galaxies of outer space there was an existing technology that could catalog distant stars and planets nasa's hubble telescope utilized an advanced computer program to identify astral bodies with the help of a computer programmer and an astrophysicist the nasa technology was modified and adapted instead of identifying stars and galaxies the new program identifies individual whale sharks the process starts with a photo of an area near the fifth gill slit and the spots are connected with triangles the computer program then analyzes the image and compares the information with other whale sharks in the database [Music] people can just go to wildsharp.org and click on the website there's a reported encounter page date time location and they can submit a photograph online there's a little bit of work that we have to do with the processing of the photographs we run a scan come up with either a match for a shark previously seen or a new shark tourists and divers can become involved in two ways one learning more about whale sharks by going to the website the second way is swim with a whale shut take a photo and send that photo with the date and location of signing and that'll help us understand more about the numbers and the movements of these whale sharks around the world at perth's murdoch university brad norman continues his pioneering work in whale shark identification his efforts have garnered him the prestigious rolex award for enterprise and he is now an emerging explorer with the national geographic society [Music] at ningaloo reef tourists come for the experience of swimming with whale sharks and at the same time they help to increase our knowledge of these enigmatic animals there's many mysteries to whale sharks we don't know where they're breeding we don't know how often they breed we don't know really where exactly they're migrating to and from and how many actually are out there these are points that as to date we haven't been able to answer but as we build the program we raise the awareness we get thousands of people involved in helping with the research for whale sharks i think we can answer the questions holbash is a tiny island northwest of mexico's yucatan peninsula [Music] remote and isolated hobash island was once reputed to be a haven for pirates became a base for fishermen now it's a popular tourist destination the number one attraction for visitors whale sharks [Music] every summer nutrient-rich water from the caribbean sea flows south across the shallow continental shelf currents fuel a massive plankton bloom like coral spawning events off ningaloo reef in australia this feast of zooplankton and fish eggs is a magnet for whale sharks the sharks attract scientists like denny ramirez a marine biologist from the biological research institute in la paz mexico good morning good morning how are you the whale sharks also draw tourists lots of them ecotourism has dramatically changed the economy of this tiny island fishermen have become tour operators this was a village of fishermen and they would see the whale shark every year but they never thought it would be something important for them the best strategy to find whale sharks get out on the water early it can take hours to locate the animals and there's no aerial spotter planes at holbox raphael de la parra is the coordinator of the domino project a unique program that partners scientists and tour operators to study the sharks and regulate tourist activities and sometimes the best way to find whale sharks is to follow the local tour boats they are pretty well organized right now they will take turns and they will try to not bother the animal they will wait a little and three people in the water at the same time then they will drift away then another boat comes and drop his people again and so on [Music] [Applause] research and tourism go hand in hand at hobash operators let the scientists know where the sharks are and relay basic information such as the sex and size of the sharks and if they've been tagged but today there's only one shark and that creates a problem tour operators take priority and the researchers must wait for their chance to work on the animal the standard rule is that tourists go first and scientists go last finally the tour boats are finished for the day before the shark has a chance to get away the researchers swing into action first order of business is to implant a yellow id tag this is a new shark one that hasn't been seen or identified before denny ramirez wants to find out how well sharks from around the world are related genetically where they're going and where they're from to do this she first needs photos to identify them denny and other scientists at holbox send their photo id images to brad norman's database in australia together researchers around the world are starting to gather a broader understanding of population numbers and global distribution the number of the picture is 44 to 60. [Music] to learn more about will shark genetics she needs to get a dna sample she's an expert free diver but it's still a challenge to keep up with the big animals skillfully she extracts a tiny piece of flesh with a sharp tool these small samples are key pieces in a genetic puzzle back on the surface danny carefully unscrews the sharp sphere tip which holds a sample of fatty tissue the flesh goes into a sterile container filled with alcohol to keep the dna from breaking down this sample will join hundreds of others back at her lab in la paz the final task is implanting an acoustic locator tag which will allow the researchers to track the shark in local waters but the tags tether has to go deeper into muscle tissue to ensure it stays in place it causes the animal some discomfort and it leaves the scene quickly the next morning denny ramirez joins a group of scientists from mote marine laboratory and the georgia aquarium these researchers are at holbox to gather information about everything from what the animals are eating to local water conditions it all helps with efforts in georgia to keep their captive animals healthy and happy in their adopted home the work that we're doing here in obash complements the work that we do at the aquarium in a lot of ways so we we learn a lot in the aquarium setting and then we also learn a lot in the field but standing alone neither one of those is really the complete picture we're actually looking at what they're eating and why they're there and so we do that basically by taking plankton toes at every place where we see animals that are actually foraging [Music] yesterday and the day before it was fish eggs normally it's different types of dopa plankton suggested shrimp copepods amphipods things like that while denny prepares her equipment there's time to test water conditions please don't put her in gear it's a lot colder down at the toward the bottom almost 30 degrees at the surface and 24 degrees down 50 feet down once various studies are completed the scientists begin searching for sharks but just like the previous day the research team has difficulty finding any animals they have to rely once more on the tour boats lured by booming ecotourism on licensed and unregulated boats from as far away as cancun are now crowding an already saturated market whale shark ecotourism has really taken off in the last five years if ecotourism on whale sharks becomes too predominant so that in all areas the world boats on virtually every animal i think that the effect is going to be negative in the long run and i think that ecotourism is going to end up being overall a negative impact on the whale shark population as a whole i fear that we're going to drive the sharks away from these important areas where they come to feed [Music] as the tour boats wind down for the day it's time for the scientists to get to work this is a pop-off satellite archival tag this tag accumulates information on shark's depth and temperature of the water and the locations of the shark as it as it migrates and we insert this dart head underneath the shark's skin and it rides with the shark then and then as a preset time the connection to the between the tag and the tether releases in this case in 90 days it will come the surface where it floats and then send all of its data back to us in the laboratory via satellite it appears to be another unidentified shark first raphael de la para implants an id tag the shark now has a number in just a few short seasons the team has tagged and identified over 600 animals denny quickly gets her dna sample and bob hueter successfully implants the satellite tag [Music] whether it's australia or mexico whale shark tourism has proven that a live shark is worth more than a dead one but is this type of tourism harmful to the animals the fact that we still don't have a great understanding of the dynamics of their behavior again underscores the importance of us being very careful with this resource and not kill the goose that laid the golden egg the goose being whale sharks the golden egg being the economy that it's been driving in terms of ecotourism we've got to take a very conservative approach in terms of how we allow ecotourism to utilize this resource just like we would do with fisheries one of the best places to snorkel or scuba dive with sharks is surprisingly the georgia aquarium it's the number one tourist attraction in atlanta and their 8 million gallon pool is now open [Music] divers and snorkelers can experience a fish-eye view of their immense lucian voyager exhibit home to some very interesting sharks [Music] [Music] [Music] the purpose of aquariums across the country around the world really is to inspire people to connect with nature we want to take it to the next level when you come to georgia aquarium you're guaranteed to see whale sharks and hammer heads and zebra sharks it's one thing to look through a window through glass to the animals it's another thing to be able to get in the water to be in their environment to understand what it's like to be an animal in the ocean if we can get people in there they become conservationists they care more [Music] in the summer of 2008 the georgia aquarium opened its main exhibit to scuba divers and snorkelers the first groups to sign up provided a behind-the-scenes look at their experience my first order of business is we're going to vote somebody off this island okay and i have immunity so you guys have to look at each other and decide who you're going to vote on a thorough briefing covers safety issues for both the divers and the animals species identification site orientation and a short video are all part of the experience [Music] are you ready [Music] state-of-the-art scuba gear is prepared for the divers but there's still one more briefing i'm going to run through a few things real quick just to give you a general idea of what's going on in our exhibit today also to give you a few guidelines for your safety and for the safety of our animals it is a rare treat indeed to scuba dive in an aquarium only a handful of facilities around the world allow the general public such intimate access to their exhibits just pretty excited about i just hope they fed the sharks [Music] many of the participants in the first few days of the program were celebrating birthdays or were signed up by friends or relatives as a gift others viewed it simply as a once in a lifetime experience not to be missed [Music] yes good birthday present you know it's disconcerting to see your daughter at the bottom of a really large tank of water with a lot of fish that looked kind of scary although there are many unusual sharks in the ocean voyager exhibit none are as immense or impressive as the whale shark and there's not just one there's four each the size of a small bus well it's unbelievable you know you dive in the ocean and you have all this beautiful wildlife around you but it's dispersed it's it's kind of a condensed version of all the dives i think i've done before it's just an incredible experience to have that much wildlife often behind confined around you at one time uh it's just exhilarating as heck that was unbelievable it was not like anything i've ever done before not a lot of diving but this is this is the bomb here scuba divers aren't the only people allowed to swim in the ocean voyager exhibit each day a group of snorkelers goes through much of the same routine but instead of descending to the bottom of the tank they stay at the surface check that off the bucket list swim with dolphins now with whale sharks that's good got to squeeze them in i'm 69 already in an aquarium they're all well-fed there's no threat there's no worry they look at you they ignore you it's a great feeling especially for a cameraman who doesn't have to worry about getting nipped in the open ocean this is a great place this is where i'm doing all my filming for now on [Music] dr eric ritter is a leading authority on shark behavior and a forensic investigator of shark attacks [Music] ritter has been instrumental in helping to change the popular perception of sharks as terrors of the sea to a vital species which deserves protection over the past two decades eric has introduced hundreds of students photographers and biologists to sharks with a keen passion for the animals and their plight he is one of few researchers who dares to freely swim with dangerous sharks ritter works exclusively outside the protection of a cage what i'm studying is the body language of sharks i'm interested in how sharks express their intentions when they approach humans track human interaction is a very new field but it's most likely the very field we need to understand these animals we cannot just observe them by sitting on boats sitting in front of aquariums we have to interact with them my main theory is that sharks are as predictable as dogs parrots cats animals that we are comfortable with animals that we used to we're not used to be with sharks we have to just give them the chance to let them interact with us in a unique experiment at walker's key gary atkinson and dr litter attract a handful of large sharks to shallow water one of eric's more controversial theories is that dangerous animals like bull and lemon sharks are not inclined to attack humans even when enticed with bait [Music] he believes attacks are caused by curiosity or mistaken identity and should be referred to more appropriately as shark accidents [Music] more than 80 percent of attack victims survive mainly because sharks realize their mistake and don't return for a second bite [Music] ritter simulates common attack scenarios such as those on swimmers in shallow water and those on sphere fishermen in deeper seas throughout his experiments fish carcasses are thrown into the surf very near to where he stands or swims the most often seen action scenario we have is through exploratory behavior meaning the animal sees us not us as a human being but us as an object several factors come together for example sound smell motion of the object sharks per se are very curious animals they have a very high level of hesitance but if their curiosity takes over at the end they may grab an object just to get a final idea of what the object could be because nothing they sense is conclusive so that's why in very rare cases they still grab the object in the spring of 2002 after nearly two decades and over a thousand dives with dangerous sharks eric's luck finally ran out he was severely bitten on the leg by a bull shark a journalist accompanying eric nervously paced and stirred up debris reducing visibility quickly the situation turned deadly a large female bull shark was cornered between the two and lashed out at eric led to this bite that i had with the bull shark was one of a general situation we've done hundreds and hundreds of times a person next to me did not stand still as i told him to he walked back and forth and so by walking back and forth he stirred up a lot of sand and so we lowered the visibility so it was us who created the situation not the animals the second i got bitten i lifted my leg right away because i had to get out of her mouth and the problem is if you have a 400 pound animal attached to you there's nearly nothing you can do i mean you always hear well hit an animal do this that that doesn't work she let go i looked at my leg and i realized um first of all there's not much left and second of all i knew i'm going to die within the next two or three hours because i've seen many of these moons and i knew how they're going to end if they don't get proper treatment eric was fortunate a small plane and its pilot were on the island at the time of the accident within 30 minutes of the bite he was on his way to west palm beach where a team of doctors was waiting he nearly died due to an enormous loss of blood once stabilized it appeared that he would lose his leg but skilled surgeons miraculously managed to save it months of rehabilitation and determined will spurred an amazing recovery additional reconstructive surgeries and skin grafts help to restore use of his leg [Music] first time i jumped back in the water was about four months after my bite the wound healed so far that i could be in a water 15-20 minutes so the first opportunity i had i jumped right back in at the very spot where i got bitten i want that everybody sees these animals the way i see them i wanted to see the animal through my eyes i see it even more clear what we have to do we have to destroy the myth the bad rap of these animals portray them the way they really are they're fascinating incredibly intelligent curious so i'm back in the water i interact with sharks more than ever so i'd say i do this for the rest of my life [Music] dr eric litter has helped to dramatically change the popular perception of sharks from bloodthirsty killers to vital animals that need our protection [Music] a leading authority on shark behavior ritter has spent thousands of hours in the water with sharks he also devotes much of his time to forensic investigation of attacks or as he prefers to call them shark accidents [Music] although he certainly pushed his luck many times ritter has serious reservations about how far some shark divers are now willing to go for a thrill when we go back to the early days of shark diving you know we were feeding the reef sharks and everybody was pretty much happy but in the last few years uh these adrenaline junkies they wanted more bigger and faster and you know now everybody seems to want to dive with tiger sharks white sharks big bull sharks but it's not a safe scenario in my opinion it has gone way too far it's not a question about if it ever happens the question when does it happen and who will be blamed the sharks back home in florida one of eric's new endeavors is the shark accident victims network there's a growing need for psychological counseling of bite victims and today ritter's traveling to neighboring alabama to meet a potential mentor and fellow shark attack victim chuck anderson hey joe hey how you doing how are you doing same here finally huh doing okay yeah how about yourself i'm doing well a champion triathlete chuck anderson was swim training for a national competition when a brutal encounter with a bull shark forever changed his life [Music] it was 6 38 a.m in the morning and i took about two more strokes in the water about that time boom it hit me from the bottom i started looking around treading the water and i put my face down in the water when i did it was coming up from the bottom at me i just instinctively threw my hands out to push off of them and when i did we took all four fingers off my right hand all that was left was my thumb just like a surgeon scalpel just cut them off clean there was no pain at that stage of the game so ben actually was coming through the water at me but as soon as he got past me he was attached to my arm he immediately took me to the bottom was about 15 feet of water he went into that feeding frenzy where he was just gnashing from side to side dragging me across the bottom on the sand all of a sudden my feet started dragging the sand and i wiggled out from underneath him and when i did i pulled real hard and my arm just stripped off in his mouth and i fell backwards into about thigh high water and ran immediately to the beach and knew that i was a very fortunate man when i got there i was had a big smile on my face and lady asked me what i was laughing at and i said karen i'll be dead i'm lucky a handful of high-profile shark attacks in 2008 created the usual media frenzy but the death of the first tourist who actually paid for the privilege of scuba diving with sharks created a firestorm of controversy have we finally taken things too far to go to the extreme of trying to challenge the sharks trying to bait the sharks to come around people and to pay money to do this it's just not natural i mean if you're not educated in exactly what you're doing and you're novice at it then you're taking a risk i'm not in favor of it uh he's to his own if somebody wants to get into it then be aware of what the consequences could be because i promise you when a shark gets a hold of you it's not a good experience this is the first fatality in our sport and it's just something you know all of us hope never happens again i think it made all of us more aware of what could happen accidents will change any industry it makes you know us as shark operators more careful with our clients with their friends with the people we take in the water i don't think shark diving has been taken too far in fact i don't even think we've scratched the surface yet there's still a lot of things left to do in the water with these animals still a lot of things left to learn to see i'm just tickled and excited to be part of that and to be part of helping to push the sport to the next level if personal experience leads to empathy and better understanding there's no question that diving with sharks is a good thing and even with more scuba divers encountering more sharks the frequency of attacks has not increased whether shark divers are crazy adrenaline junkies enlightened conservationists or both there's no denying their passion for these threatened animals many people still share the notion that the only good shark is a dead one the problem today is that there are far too many dead sharks and the remaining population is struggling to survive and if sharks are to survive we must all become advocates on their behalf [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary - Nature

Views: 1,334,927

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), nature documentary, Free Documentary Nature, Nature, Wildlife, Wildlife Documentary, Animals, Animal Documentary, Ocean, Ocean Documentary, Sharks, Shark Documentary, Shark Divers, Shark Divers Documentary, Shark Diving, Scuba Diving, World's Most Dangerous Jobs, Marine Life, Ocean Life, Most Dangerous Sharks, Great White Shark, Cage Diving, Shark Attack

Id: wSm3643w9-I

Length: 91min 40sec (5500 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 21 2022