When Shark Divers Go Too Far | The Blue Realm | Real Wild

sharks are big business in adrenaline ecotourism and some thrill-seekers deliberately pursue close encounters with deadly sharks divers are pushing the boundaries of human and shark interaction baiting with fish carcasses and blood inciting feeding frenzies all in a quest to get ever closer to creatures that can kill them after an injury ended his career professional bull rider Eli Martinez founded shark diver magazine and he also organizes excursions for shark enthusiasts and there's no shark guide more exciting or dangerous than Tiger Beach a northern Bahamas Nautilus explorers Explorer captain my cleavers most popular trips feature encounters with great white sharks at mexico's Guadalupe Island he's trying something completely different introducing young children to sharpen sea in 2008 the first tourist on a commercial shark diving expedition was killed by a shark death ignited a firestorm of controversy shark advocates and shark attack victims Eric Twitter and Chuck Anderson at grave reservations about how far we are willing to go for a thrill [Music] [Music] [Music] it's reasonable to assume most people would want to avoid sharks but some scuba divers and snorkelers pay big bucks to get up close and personal with the animals bigger and more dangerous the shark the better shark encounters are becoming one of the most popular attractions in the sport with or without the protection of a cage [Music] we've gone for being very very afraid of sharks to having an almost cavalier attitude about them but have we taken shark diving 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 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 the shark diversity there is something final 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 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 [Music] 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 former rodeo cowboy Martinez suffered a career-ending injury shortly after turning professional 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 stuff 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 cuz I decided to get my diving certification and went on a dive trip and I'm dropping down I saw a shark and that was it basically 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 live-aboard 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'm coming out here 27 years now and we came to this area and we anchor it up because it was a shallow protected area sometimes at night we'd have some dead carcasses and we throw them in the water and they come up and start feeding on them yeah after a while there's got to be such high demand for people one to see tiger sharks that we started running these trips everybody welcome to Tiger Beach see we already have a bunch of lemon sharks swimming around we prefer everybody dive in too so that somebody can watch your back while you're in the water once you jump in keep your hands here don't start waving them around or splashing other than that we already got sharks here the pool is open I gotta get in there this is what we nutty people do what it's for my jailhouse tat I didn't actually get it in jail any last words new look after my wife and children I started wearing the Hat was to save my hair kind of became my trademark so I never died without it by the time I don't is when it's really really cold I gotta wear a hoodie but I've still trying to figure out how I can make that one dozens of lemon sharks are a constant presence 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 [Music] [Applause] [Music] holy crap I've done some scary bye David that one takes the cake you didn't wanna know what was not me behind you yeah that was took a little chew on your tank there's nothing I could do about it [Applause] first died first day of the trip I get 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 shark 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 he decide your tank was something he'd like to investigate sweetie he went up paint just kind of mouthed it a little bit and you're oblivious to the whole thing of course those are big rather impressive looking sharks I gotta say that he really didn't bump anybody else you know he just came back to your house again and you know the tiger shark was just looking around for that food he really couldn't find it probably saw the housing potentially a meal or something bumped it but after that he found what he was looking for and what after that to attract and keep the big shots close you have to use bait a lot of things [Music] most divers rarely see sharks 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 in the way to the Sharks here however we are just another big predator down there for the same reason they are for the food we get our fish from the fish market that stuff they were gonna throw away we feed that to the Sharks so it's a win-win for everybody we recycle what they were gonna normally throw away in the trash bag go throw about 250 300 pounds of bait for a day get a variety if they 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 to get in these bonitas which are real oily and bloody and they're not a food fish nobody eats them as foods and they make excellent bait we constantly have to adapt the way we're feeding them because they're clever little devils all the ways we do that is tend to get them excited there at the surface if I'm gonna thrash around because they're so easier to get the bait and that thrashing around is what's bringing the Tigers in these days big sharks use big bait we're prepping a grouper head and what we're gonna do is we're gonna wrangle in the Sharks we're gonna hang this out the back and try to track the Tigers to the boat we use big heads like this because if we use smaller pieces of fish well the sharks will kind of take it away real quick I got a real thick bone in their head so these we can last with this one piece of bait and it'll keep us there for a while [Music] the lemons have kind of dominated this place but they're definitely smaller in the pecking order when the Tygers come in and they want to feed you know there's nothing's gonna 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 can see here that if a tiger shark can get his lower jaw on the bottom of this crate I mean 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 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 leaves your figure way to get inside to the bait that we have hanging and yeah it's definitely a learned behavior couple local Bahamians coming off one of the small islands out of there spearfishing I don't think he knows this is Tiger shark-infested waters and these guys are out there spearfishing that's extreme that's a gnarly as it gets I love my job another day at the office oh yeah beats riding bulls huh are you kidding me I literally mirai martinez has found a unique niche in the scuba diving world this 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 adventures I organized our first shark trip and it 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 you hear all these crazy people can get together and no one thinks you're crazy anymore Martinez frequently dies 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 where 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 close they actually go at divers mouth open you can see the gouges from sharks as a they really bite into the glass as the week progressed the action at Tiger Beach ramped up way up aggressive baiting chumming were perhaps a bit too successful and full of tiger sharks became increasingly walpole 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 you hope for you know Harry Jesus Christ I may have drifted into the other divers that were there but I turn around and I'm looking straight at the face of a tiger shark and he wasn't a small one either the Sharks came in they came in hard and and it was it was intense there 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 and 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 viewing his tape after the last eye of the tiger Beach Eli's video camera revealed an encounter that could have seriously gone wrong this is one sequence destined for the highlight [Music] effective that is what shark-diving is all about extreme shark-diving that was an outstanding dive absolutely outstanding Tigers for Tigers nipping at the tanks biting the cage the food cage and ice dancer it's all about that's where we came out here is a 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 the shark in its natural habitat and I did a lot of reef diving in that and they 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 but it goes a lot further than that it's hard to describe until you've actually dove with one hour swam with one they're just such beautiful animals they're so graceful and powerful you know the more you know about ohms or less your Theorem 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 nothing of hers to shark diving that that intense adrenaline rush you get when you first see it see a big shark in the water which was ten or fifteen 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 if you take someone that's never been in the water with a shark before that has a positive experience in the water they're gonna come out as shark advocates and they're gonna be fighting for these animals and they're gonna 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 as 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 the number-one species on every shark divers list is the great white and there's no better place on earth to find them than mexico's Guadalupe Island [Music] there's no doubt sharks have an image problem razor-sharp teeth the icy stare bloody feeding frenzies it's no wonder they were in 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 Guadeloupe approaching the intimidating coastline of the island the first order of business is to prepare the shark Kage's [Music] keep Lots attention 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 place about a thousand tons of page of lifting in open ocean with a wee bit of a swell the cage is 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 to 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 Guadeloupe is an arid and desolate outpost in the open Pacific towering cliffs and rugged mountains rise over 4,000 feet from sea level [Music] nineteenth-century whalers brought goats to Guadalupe Bay as a source of fresh meat the annum was multiplied as intended and eventually destroyed most of the islands flora and fauna [Music] today some of the few original inhabitants that remain or fur seals sea lions and elephant seals and life here must be harsh this is the realm of the great white [Music] [Applause] in the late-1990s long-range fishing boats targeting tuna near Guadalupe began reporting the great whites were attacking their caches words spread like a chum slick [Music] [Applause] the industry started here in 2000 and then a boat called the Verizon showed up and 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 and 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 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 ramped up from two trips that first year to nine to ten trips a year [Music] like the Sharks at Tiger Beach great whites in Guadalupe need to be coaxed with bait and nothin piques their interest like tuna [Music] sharkbait we're gonna 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 and make sure that you use animals that are endemic to the islands mackerel and tuna and we started 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 of the water do oh seagulls mackerel and a feeding frenzy that is fresh tuna [Music] [Applause] [Music] 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 were more afraid of [Music] I just could believe how big they are and how beautiful they are I mean they're they're just they're not not at all ferocious looking they look like they're smiling at you until they open their mouth captain my cleaver has two young children with a keen interest in sharks and he's now trying something completely different introducing kids to white sharks the inaugural children's trip at Guadalupe included three kids from Mexico and Mike and Mary Ann Lieber's own children Charlie and Emily [Music] [Music] I know it heavy but once you get in the water you already feel it how many sharks do you think you're gonna see [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 I [Music] don't recall what I was doing at six years old what but it wasn't diving with white sharks I think was like riding my tricycle or on the street or something like that every time a shark would come by Charlie you'd 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 anything about 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 into all ten kids and ten more kids and can't be any better at night I was freezing I wanted to come out she didn't want to come out I go to the bathroom and she won't come out and I kept saying we've got 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 - because I didn't want to come up with they just loved watching the sharks flying by and I can't wait to find out what happens when they get home and they start telling their friends doctor 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 and he's particularly excited to be working on this inaugural children's trip we went to the United States and my father gave me $20 and hip 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 $20 I bought it because I really want it and my father was really upset because he told me hey that's all your money do you have to you can buy a lot of different toys no no I want that toy and I still have it because since I was a little kid I love sharks when I saw the first shark guy 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 Sharks 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 Ray's and other sharks while the older and larger white sharks eat seals and sea lions 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 Chuck Spring get big it put it right here right here okay actually [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 in Guadeloupe 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 has 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 me with the luxury of well-appointed tour boats and their state-of-the-art shark cages Mauricio can also observe the Sharks underwater [Applause] photo ID is another tool in the young researchers are something each shark has unique markings scars and patterns that of luck Hoyas will have many more seasons at Guadalupe to answer some of the questions surrounding these intriguing animals Guadeloupe 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 then tank 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 gonna be here for them and for their kids and their kids kids nothing could have given me a greater thrill into a spent 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 ten years from now there won't be any sharks left [Music] if you don't relish an open ocean encounter with a big shark you can now scuba dive or snorkel with them in Atlanta's Georgia Aquarium 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 they're eight million gallon pool is now open divers and snorkelers can experience a fisheye view of their immense ocean 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 hammerheads 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 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 you guys have to look at each other and decide who you're gonna 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] right [Music] state-of-the-art scuba gear is prepare for the divers but there's still one more briefing it is a rare treat indeed to scuba dive in an aquarium and they a handful of facilities around the world allow the general public such intimate access to their exhibits just pretty excited about it 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] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] that look kinda 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 eats the size of a small bus [Music] you know you dive in the ocean and you have all this beautiful wildlife around you but it's dispersed it's kind of a condensed version of all the dives they got done before it's just an incredible experience to have that much wildlife our confinement and find around you at one time it's just exhilarating as heck I was unbelievable it was not like anything I've ever done before it meant a lot of diving but this is this is the Bob here [Music] scuba divers aren't the only people allowed to swim in the ocean Voyager exhibit each day a group of snorklers 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 swam with dolphins now with whale sharks that's good got a squeeze of in of 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 even though most shark dives are relatively safe two prominent shark advocates think we may be taking things a bit too far and they both survive brutal shark attacks [Music] dr. Eric litter has helped to dramatically change the popular perception of sharks from bloodthirsty killers to vital animals that need our protection 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 and Eric has intimate knowledge of the subject after thousands of interactions with dangerous sharks his luck finally ran out in 2002 while filming a television special he nearly died after a large bull shark bit his leg although he certainly pushed his luck many times Ritter has serious reservations about how far some sharp divers are now willing to go were thrilled let me go back to the early days of shark diving you know we were feeding doubt the reef sharks and everybody was pretty much happy but in the last few years these adrenaline junkies they want a more bigger and faster and you know now everybody seems to wanna 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 is a question of 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 litters travelling to neighboring Alabama to meet a potential mentor and fellow shark attack victim Chuck Anderson how about yourself a champion triathlete Chuck Anderson was swim training for a national competition when a brutal encounter with a bull shark forever changed his life it was 6:30 a.m. in the morning and I took about two more strokes in the water my 5th time photo it hit me from the bottom I started looking around treading water and I put my face down in the water when I did it was coming up from the bottom that man I just instinctively threw my hands out to push off of when I did we took all four fingers off in the right hand and all that was left was my thumb just like a surgeon's scalpel just cut him off clean there was no pain that that stays in the game so then actually it's coming through the water at the end but as soon as you got past me he was attached to my arm it immediately took me to the bottom that's 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 like wiggle out from underneath him and when I did I pulled real hard and arm just stripped off in his mouth and I fell backwards into about the high water and ran immediately to the beach and knew that I was very fortunate me and 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 ought to 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 each to his own if somebody wants to get into it then be aware of what could the consequences can because I promise you when a shark gets ahold 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 you 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 the shark divers are crazy adrenaline junkies light and 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]

Channel: Real Wild

Views: 99,985

Rating: 4.5543766 out of 5

Keywords: nature documentary, full documentary, documentary movie, wildlife documentary, discovery channel, national geographic, Nature documentaries - topic, Animals - topic, planet earth, Full Animal Documentary, wild animals, the blue realm, underwater photography, shark bite, shark divers, shark death, under water videography, cana media, blue realm

Id: vHiSyeD-Xl8

Length: 49min 53sec (2993 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 14 2019