The Real Jaws - Episode 1

now remember this mouth was probably about two feet from me it's one of our worst nightmares a deep instinctive fear the shock caught right through my leg right down to the bone driven into our psyche at the 1974 blockbuster jaws a horror that's already struck in Western Australia at the popular beaches up and down this coast lot God's garage in just 10 months five people have lost their lives in random attacks from the most feared oceanic predator the villain in Jaws the great white shark deaths that rocked the community why do sharks attack humans can we stop them from hunting us we really have to understand sharks to develop effective deterrence shark scientists around the world search for clues and race to save people and sharks before the next attack of the real choice the movie Jaws was a Hollywood fantasy a giant row great white shark terrorizes the beaches of Cape Cod Massachusetts in Western Australia there's a fear the fantasy has become a reality a 300% increase in fatal attacks has made the waters of Western Australia the world's deadliest September 2011 Kyle blood and body water October 2000 friend Martin swimming at Perth's famous Carter's light beige and George white light March 2012 Peter Kerman diving with his brother July 2012 Ben Linda certainly and in November 2013 surfer Chris Boyd in Perth the attacks shocks the community and shark researchers changing how this beach culture city thinks about swimming and surfing just like the town on the movie Jaws birth is steeped in an atmosphere of fear and public opinion is polarized if a white shark great white is seen to be in close proximity of the beach then that shark can be destroyed state government reacts by calling for a cull of great white sharks near the beaches others want the federally protected animals left alone but it's not just great whites that are a threat other species known to attack humans are bull sharks hammerheads bronze whalers and tiger sharks you don't feel the teeth you don't feel anything bit of pressure like surgeon steel David Pickering was a snorkeling tour guide on the reefs of Australia's west coast there was three kids with me at the time I said guys I've got a bad feeling stick together and I spun around and I remembered this mouth was probably about two feet from me the tail sort of kicked out once and it was on me put a hand out like that and actually cut 13 tendons and all three nerves after you've been bitten the first thing on your mind is is it coming back for me or someone else thank God I got bitten and not one of the kids because I couldn't live with that I can't go out in the water now without thinking about it can't shake that feeling yeah nervous anxious this is what it reduces me to and when you love something so much then you can't do it I used to take things for granted all right having a limb that works perfectly but now I appreciate every day what triggers sharks to attack humans when we are not their natural prey and can scientists find a way to prevent these tragic events the job of finding out how sharks senses what triggers an attack and are prevented falls to dr. Sean Collins senior researcher at the University of Western Australia one of the basic questions we're really interested in is determining wire shark attacks privacy's a human what are the sensory cues it uses to make that decision Colin's work delves deep into shark biology to learn for the first time what sharks see hear smell and sense in ways we're just beginning to understand his goal tests all the shark deterrence currently on the market and develop new ones based on groundbreaking science we want to get rid of the guesswork we want to base it on evidence we can then rigorously test and have a statistical basis to rely on to develop these deterrents and bring them to market he's come here on the coast of Western Australia to a place with a well-earned name Shark Bay to test shark deterrence based on years of research into the sensory systems of sharks sharks are a major part of the marine ecosystem they've been around for 400 million years they balance the ecosystem their sensory machines which are sampling the environment continuously sharks have sensors like us sight smell taste hearing and touch but they have other extraordinary senses beyond our own they can detect weak electrical fields the Earth's magnetic field and my new changes in water pressure caused by passing prey Collins research focuses on shark vision especially in the creature that horns our jaws inspired nightmares the great white shark cracked his sensory code and : might just hold the key to saving lives great white sharks are ambush predators cruising deeper water to spot prey above them : pioneered the technique of determining what sharks can see and how well they see a silhouette of a human but that casting of that silhouette high contrast edges look a lot like a seal especially if it's on a surfboard or a swimmer at the surface so if we can work out how a great white visualizes its prey from below we've got a very good chance of preventing an attack kahlan's work with shark vision starts here in the lab for the first time deconstructing how the great white targets its prey we've got a a great white I probably individual about two and a half meters long the structure of shark eyes is similar to our own with surgical precision : and team member Caroline Kersey Redner from the shark's eye a thin transparent layer of tissue containing light-sensitive cells called photoreceptors and other cells that transmit information to the brain if you'd like peeling an orange the more tightly the photoreceptors are packed within the retina the sharper the image then the transparent retina is stained with the purple dye making the cellular structures easily visible with a computer-controlled microscope the result is a map of the shark's retina showing the density of photoreceptors in different areas in this case the highest densities of cells occur in this region of the retina this part of the eye has the greatest ability to see detail contrast and movement that means that in the great whites field of view their sharpest vision is of objects above them putting surfers and swimmers directly in the line of sight of these awesome predators this gives us a lot of information about what part of the I they direct towards eating prey so the need for effective shock to terrorism is greater than ever and not just in Australia back in the real life setting of the movie Jaws something is causing great whites to gather in frightening numbers that have never been seen before 12 feet of water off the coast of Cape Cod Massachusetts where the movie Jaws was filmed great white sharks are appearing in waters where for hundreds of years they've almost never been seen for fisheries biologist Greg skomal it's a new opportunity to study animals in the Western North Atlantic whose behavior is virtually unknown and if he can track and monitor their movements he may be able to lessen the risk to swim and the white shark is probably the most charismatic fish in the ocean white sharks can weigh in excess of four or five thousand pounds hit in excess of 20 feet long so that's a very big fish we know that these sharks can live up to 50 years great whites are found in every ocean unlike most other sharks they produce and store heat in their bodies allowing them to tolerate colder temperatures in an area where they were rarely seeing scramble was surprised to sight and tag one great white shark in 2009 of Cape Cod over the next three years he tagged 17 great whites then in 2012 alone he tagged 17 more if you said to me five years ago you're gonna tag for 34 white sharks the next four years I'm gonna say you're out of your mind why has Cape Cod suddenly become the summer hunting grounds for one of the oceans most dangerous predators for SkyMall the answer is obvious on the beaches and in the water seals it wasn't until we had the development of these seal aggregations here in eastern side of Cape Cod that the white shark started to take notice the growing number of great whites in the area seems tied to a population explosion among seals we have several species of seals that occur here but the two dominant ones are harbor seals and gray seals the gray seals a much bigger seal species it's the one I believe that the white sharks are targeting gray seals get to be about seven eight hundred pounds in eight nine feet long the big animals the big targets big thick blubber layer on them and now we know that there's over 300 thousand seals off Canada alone and tens of thousands off the coast of the United States it's really ideal habitat for them but in them coming here in essence they've they've opened the cafe for white sharks you've got the perfect zone for white sharks to come in and consume these animals on a routine basis and that's precisely what we've been seeing over the last decade as the cafe emits some kind of delicious odor I'm sure that goes out miles into the Great South Channel and once the Sharks come in and figure it out we've actually had animals come back each year for the seals or anyone swimming neelam these have become dangerous waters in the last several years we've been seeing more and more evidence of these seals being attacked bites on seals dead seals wounds that can really only be created by one species of fish another white shark sometimes he only wants what's left these are the intestines of a seal and that would be really good evidence of an attack that's all that's left which is pretty amazing it is ironic that 10 miles or so from here is you know the set of the movie Jaws we talk about jaws as this Hollywood production that was fantasy and if we look at all the elements of Jaws we see really many parts of it that are somewhat true what Spielberg did was just take those tidbits of truth and exaggerate the hell out of them the white shark getting 20 feet long becomes the white shark 25 feet the white shark nibbling the boat it becomes the white shark sinking the boat the white shark biting people to the white truck becoming a a ravenous predator desiring human flesh all it takes is just you know one person to be field in this area and that fiction can become reality we have this kind of geographic overlap between high densities of white sharks and high densities of people inevitably we get interactions most Cape Cod likely to be the next place that happens yeah sure this is shark Cove is this is the one we get most of the detections on right SkyMall detects the presence of the sharks has tagged over the past four years with a series of acoustic receivers suspended in the water this is the big one all right yes for number four before the tags transmit a signal indicating that scum old shots are returning to their summer hunting grounds tell me when you're ready ready we've had a shark here today within the past half hour this kicks his tagging effort into high gear he uses a specially outfitted boat to sneak up on and tag more sharks if Scott will find sharks close to the beaches he can warn Beach officials you've got 120 meters away just sitting in the water you may not know it's there despite the great whites massive saw a spot applying is the best way to find untagged sharks in the murky green water okay here we go right up in the shallows heading for the shore see the shadow ahead of you there he's coming back right under us right under us that's our baby scar molesta mites this bright white is nearly four meters long and it's swimming just a hundred meters from the beach in water almost shallow enough for a swim understand look at really moving in just one day SkyMall spots five great ones some he's tagging Treves he is I see one of the tags it's red and new comes to animals that have been elusive can now be studied the nice fish Asko molt successfully tags more and more sharks it looks really good yeah what's that we got it we got it it's pioneering stuff it's never been done before we never had predictable access to white sharks in the Western North Atlantic and because of all those seals sitting out there now we do his acoustic tags may say flies allowing officials to close beaches when a tagged shock is detected we can tell where the Sharks are and when they approach popular swimming beaches and in some cases we've actually reached out to those areas to say oh by the way you've got a shark in your backyard halfway across the world at mrs. Australia could seals be the reason behind spike in fatal attacks there's not a day that I haven't thought about it Elyse Frankcom was a snorkeling guide for tourists wanting to swim with dolphins I was diving under the water and came up for a breath and that's when I just felt this almighty whack the impact was just like getting slammed by train I remember getting pushed out of the water I looked down and that's when I knew what had happened first reaction was punch it push it away the shark swam off then I started sinking and I was unconscious I remember taking my first breath as soon as they got me on the boat that's when the pain kicked in very very intense pain the shark cut right through my leg right down to the bone that's 70 stitches on that side and 130 or something on that side I've had a shark tooth pulled out of my bone I had to learn how to walk again my mind is starting to play games on me now I'm starting to dream about sharks a lot more the longer I stay out of the ocean the more scared I get the spate of attacks in Western Australia has left people frightened and scientists possibility why do these attacks happen could they be tied to an increase in a key food source for great whites seals on rottnest island in western australia a fledgling colony of seals has taken hold just 13 kilometres from the popular beaches of Perth where surfing swimming and scuba diving is a way of life and fatal shark attacks are on the rise other sharks hunting seals and finding people instead Fisheries departments are just war in the court let's depart now sharks can be anywhere that's what we're trying to find out is when where and why sharks come in close to to Perth beaches or Rottnest Island McAuley monitors the movements of tagged great white sharks with these acoustic receivers data is transmitted directly to his computer the Sharks he says aren't here that seals they do eat seals but it seems very unlikely to me that this handful of seals is providing enough of a draw card to either be attracting sharks and or keeping them here for any sustained period of time why more sharks are here McCauley says isn't clear what is clear is that with more people than ever enjoying the ocean the risk of sharks and people needing hedaan has gone up and not just in Western Australia it's the peak of summer a young woman decides to go for a swim off a Queensland beach at a place called Emily port bizarrely echoing the name of the town terrorized by a shark in the movie Jaws just 15 meters from the beach she dies a light in the water rare as they are shark bites a horrific event preventing shark attacks is Sean Collins goal he's here in shark bite Western Australia to test shark deterrence that are already available to the public and new ones that he and his team are developing we worked on lots of smaller sharks in our laboratory tanks at the University but we've got to make that progression from the lab to the wine these metal frames are designed to hold a baked canister to attract sharks along with the shark deterrent to be tested and a pair of cameras the idea of having two cameras is that we've got two different perspectives on the behavior of the Sharks Collins team preps the first test with a device that emits an electric field powerful enough to shock a human if the antenna is touched this has a long electrode which is this leave here which extends for a couple of meters typically behind a diver or the wearer and once turned on creates what an extensive and fairly strong electric field around the device this is the other type of commercially available electric device that we're going to be testing it's an anklet style device again worn by divers or swimmers bait canisters are filled with a mixture of smelling bloody ground fish and the electro repellent rigs are deployed but will they work each rig is anchored to the bottom and suspended in the water column both floats they'll be left for two to three hours enough time they hope for the bait to attract a shark this is what happens when these rigs are deployed without the turn bites that would inflict serious wounds which will be stronger the scent of food or the electric deterrents can Collins team learn how sharks use other sensors to target their prey and find a way to keep us safe great white sharks rely on vision to target their prey but other species rely more on their ability to sense electrical fields or their sense of smell how can we tell which senses off the greatest importance for each species carrier pack a member of Colin's research team gets inside the shark's head literally to find out Kari opaque studies the brains of sharks to understand what senses they rely on most when you look at a brain I can make fairly good predictions about what that animals eating how fast it's swimming the general environment that it's living in this is the brain of a great hammerhead shark hammerheads are open ocean predators living along the continental shelf in tropical and warm temperate seas worldwide they feed mostly on fish its regions for the brain for vision are actually not very enlarged this is likely not to be a very visual animal hammerheads rely on other senses like electroreception to target their prey allowing them to detect the electrical charge given off by a muscle twitch or a heartbeat the potential pride a sense much more developed than in the great white hey we've got the brains of the Great White the regions of the brain that received visual input are quite large in comparison to other species as are the regions of the brain that receive smell but what becomes very pronounced in the Hammerhead is this protrusion here at the front of the brain and this is a region that we've associated with what we call social intelligence so you see enlargement of this area and species that form true schools that aggregate by sex and size and that often have complex courtship and mating rituals whereas in the great white that region of the brain is not very pronounced which leads us to believe that the great white is in fact a solitary hunter there's another conspicuous difference between the brains of these two species a lot of people are really surprised when they see the brain of a great white particularly in comparison to the Hammerhead because it looks so small but there's an amazing range of behaviors that the great whites capable of and it's all controlled by this brain so there's clearly a difference in senses that these animals are relying on they all have the same battery of sensory systems but the relative importance of each of those systems is going to be varied between species the degree to which different species rely on individual senses is reflected by what parts of the brain are enlarged close to which senses the target to develop effective deterrents the idea of creating a blanket repellent that's gonna repel all sharks in the same way really isn't realistic but when we're developing a repellent for a great white shark we likely want to target the visual sense if shark's eyes resemble their own can they see different colors like us : thought that sharks like their close relatives stingrays would have color vision similar to ours whether you're a fish or a human color vision is made possible by three different types of cells in the retina called cone cells each one responding to a different color red green or blue working in Sean Collins lab colleague Nathan Hart uses a machine that measures what color like the Sharks photoreceptive cells are sensitive to so you can see here the beings that scans through from the UV to the rate what he finds in the shark species that they've examined including great whites is that they only detect one color of light in the green part of the spectrum everything they see is in shades of that color for us with no other color to compare it's like black and white we were very surprised to find out that sharks were colorblind two out of the three cone photoreceptors were missing so we only found a single cone photoreceptor now this means that they don't have the machinery within the retina to process color Colin believes this inability to see color and a reliance on high contrast are keys to creating an effective deterrent for many species of shark beside smell electrode reception different senses relied on my different species but is there a way to keep all sharks from attacking us scientist Shawn Kola and his team are experimenting with new technologies to deter shark attacks I'm shocked by their testing deterrence based on their research into sharp vision this one is a flashing wine don't transfer the footage to their computers to watch later here's their comment from Rick 27 this is instruments Oh brilliant see if we've had some luck this time in the meantime they've got another deterrent a test scientifically designed patterns for wetsuits this is designed to be camouflaged underwater certainly to the visual system of a shark yeah that's : heart discovered sharks are colorblind they see the world in shades of black and white this material is designed to fade into the background as the light changes at different depths each color tailored to what a shark's eye sees so the idea is the shark just swims by and has trouble singing that's right a second design is very different we've also got something which has been suggested for a number of years to be a good shark deterrent and that's a pattern that mimics a sea snakes coloration sea snakes are highly venomous and like many animals that are they advertise their toxicity with bold patterns that warn predators to stay away most sharks don't like eating things that are striped such as a sea snake it actually is a noxious animal to them avoiding stripes seems to be a strategy of many sharks again the team's research into what sharks can see is crucial to recreating the sea snake design in the right proportions we had to actually work out the spacing of that pattern the bars or the stripes by our knowledge of the spatial resolving power or the resolution of the art the underwater cameras run continuously during each test of a deterrent for the scientists finding that instant when a shark approaches means scanning hours of footage finally their patience is rewarded that's cool a bronze Whaler a shark 9 to attack here it's and spam the bait this test has the flashing light as a visual deterrent to think a little Remora following it go for work like the shark makes five passes at the bank never getting too close each time turning away these sharks are opportunistic who's clearly interested in the bait but the flashing light seems to keep this one at a distance certainly a big turd Erica probably analyzes in slow motion as well so you can time when the lights on with how the shark react absolutely next type results from the test drug we saw earlier with the bait canisters and the anklet style electrical deterrent hammerheads hunt in the electroreception and I same especially sensitive to electrical things don't eat came straight in right towards the bait and then almost did 180-degree turn straightaway yeah looks like the turtle and this this is the when the device was turned on that the electric field extending out the card I was amazing finally the bold sea snake wetsuit design seems to turn another hammerhead on its tail in the same behavior didn't get too close this time that was deterred from a greater distance from the actual device this first step in their research seems to be paying off Colin and his team will take what they've learned to create the next evolution of the terror devices and test them in a way that's never been done Shawn Collin has spent years researching the sensory system of sharks to understand why they attack humans and to find ways to stop them and now he'll examine the latest devices his lab is created from a perspective no other scientist has hand inside a submarine and just venting my BCD now status lights are good permission to dive that's beautiful what an amazing view for the first time Colin will observe how his deterrence work in the open ocean and how they might appear to sharks I must say this is a really unique perspective to watch the deterrence in action it's not only my first time is submersible but also to actually see how well the rigs are actually playing out in in the natural environment this perspective is it's quite incredible after their efforts in shock by the team is built on you more powerful flashing light deterrent see the rig very clearly sitting up beautifully that's ready tears see the floats yeah vertically suspending the horizontal bar to go stereo cameras facing downwards yeah like a very good view of the bottom and the flashing light to turn which is extremely bright yeah the team redesigned the test ring to look down on the bait hand eternity and modify the strength and speed of the flash to determine how fast the reticle react to delight the brilliant flashing light should frighten the shark like our reaction when suddenly caught in the headlights of an oncoming car Collin thinks this could be a personal deterrent if the large battery pack now floating at the surface can be made smaller like diver could strap this to his tank or ankle or something and be an effective deterrent there's a startup factor we think this is also a very useful way to to two sharks from the patches of material I tested in charmed by Collin has helped design wetsuits for divers and surface but this is the first time Collin will see how each suit performs from the Sharks perspective wonderful to see these these divers in mid-water and how well the striped suit is actually seen at quite some distance and how under certain conditions depending on which way we're looking how the camouflage suit actually tends to merge a little bit into the background the effectiveness of the design becomes more apparent when viewed the way a shark sees basically in black and white these suits are on the market : hearts research may already be paying off for divers and surfers but more tests with big predatory sharks are needed we are still involved in doing further testing on more species and under different conditions a major focus of Collins research is devising a deterrent that could protect not just an individual but an entire Beach be the first time we've tested this in the wild so this is very exciting a device that's effective on many types of sharks there we go do that so almost come out godly this continuous stream of bubbles over ten meters it's a bubble curtain a wall of fine bubbles that would seem like a physical barrier to a shark that's quite powerful bubble extending most of the way to the surface : believes this veil of bubbles affects sharks in more than one way shark approaches it will mostly provide a visual barrier to them so they may be very reticent to to cross that bubbles will make a noise and so there may be also an auditory deterrent there as well and of course that all sharks have a well-developed lateral line sense the lateral line in sharks and fishes is highly sensitive to touch and changes in water pressure a sense that will be overstimulated by the bubble curtain that would actually interfere with their lateral line system and they provide a 1/3 sensory deterrent so we have a visual acoustic and a lateral line sense all being interfered with simultaneously that really is a wall of bubbles are very impressive non physical barrier sharks well I think see as a as a wall as far as a test I think this is great success Collin envisioned this bubble curtain one day protecting entire swimming beaches compressor mounted on Shaw one minute you switch that on provide an effective non-physical barrier that people could feel more protected with him for : this submersible has let him see he's deterrence in an entirely new way this is an amazing way of assessing the effectiveness of these deterrents and it really has made a big difference to our research with what they've learned here today Colin and his team will test this next evolution of the Terrance with the animals at Camp bald Tigers and great white sharks despite the spate of attacks that have happened over the last year or so still inherently hard to find large predatory sharks off our personality for now there is no one answer no surefire way to protect humans from attack but these latest designs may reduce the number of attacks we need more sharks interacting with our deterrents before we can really make any judgments about how effective they are their wild animals are hard to study but we really do feel that we can deter them from our beaches that's the goal that these scientists are racing to achieve in their quest to better understand is powerful predators and to try and save the lives of both humans and sharks you

Channel: The Real Jaws

Views: 901,689

Rating: 4.6429467 out of 5

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Id: 9-X4ATKH6Po

Length: 43min 30sec (2610 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2015