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Even if you go no closer to the sea than sticking one toe in the water on a
summer holiday, you almost certainly have a built-in horror and fear of sharks.
Sharks have a very bad name. A survival underwater team has been studying the
behavior of sharks over a wide range of the Pacific. When you watch the result of
their researches, we don't expect you to love sharks, but we do hope you will
admire them for the magnificent creatures they are and understand them a
little better.
We shall separate the comparatively harmless from the likely killers. We'll
discover what motivates them to attack and how aggressive some of them really
are. Perhaps we'll even be able to take some of the horror out of that dreaded
word, shark.
If any species deservedly gives sharks a bad name, it is this monster, otherwise
known as the great white shark and sometimes as the white death. This is the
beast that wheels those famous jaws. The great white is the world's largest
predatory fish. It can reach 21 feet in length and weigh up to three tons. It
holds the dubious record of having made more attacks on man than any other
species. It is impossible to pretend that the great white is anything but what it
is, a killer of fish, turtles, sea lions and men. It even attacks boats. It is
distributed over most of the temperate seas of the world and even penetrates
the Mediterranean. No one takes chances with the great white. Even the protection
of our team's shark cage seemed mighty flimsy when one of these monsters was
swimming around their boat. Look at that extensible jaw, the better to bite with
and what bites. This Australian diver Henry Borse lost a right leg to a great
white off Melbourne. Another Australian Rodney Fox, so he was attacked by a great
white that exposed rib cage, lungs and stomach. So much for the arch villain of
the shark scene. But now let's take a wider view of sharks as a whole. This is
the largest of them all. The whale shark grows to 60 feet and weighs up to 90,000
pounds. It has 3,000 teeth and doesn't use any of them. That's because it's
largely a plankton feeder. It's of a friendly disposition but a word of
warning, a pair of boots was found in the stomach of one specimen. Friendliness is
not the most noted characteristic of the bizarre looking hammerhead. It has been
known to attack man. In the 350 million years the sharks have been around on
earth, they've evolved some strange forms. This is one of the strangest of the 300
shark species swimming in the oceans today. It's a Pacific angel fish. With
its flattened appearance it looks like a ray but it's a true shark. Like many of
the bottom living sharks it's quite harmless. Just like a ray it often
buries itself in sand. The horn shark too is completely harmless to man except
when it destroys his shellfish beds. It feeds largely on mollusks and crustaceans.
There are the specialized crushing teeth with which it does the job. Some sharks
give birth to live young. Others carry their eggs inside their bodies where the
embryos hatch just before they're born. A third group expels their eggs in
leathery cases and then leaves them to hatch. Off the Californian coast the
camera team was lucky to discover egg cases of both horn and swell sharks.
Inside the spiral case a young horn shark is developing. This so-called mermaid's
purse shelters a swell shark embryo. It will emerge in about five months. These
egg cases are mostly laid by bottom living sharks. The Australian wobba gong
is one of the weirdest of the bottom feeders. Wobba gong is an aboriginal word
and has nothing to do with its style of movement. The wobba gong is a carpet
shark beautifully camouflaged even down to the algae like growths around its
mouth. Would you take this creature for a shark? It is one and rejoices in the name
of Heterodontus portus jacksoni. It's the Port Jackson shark of Australia, another
harmless shallow water species.
This large creature being caressed by Australian photographer Valerie Taylor
is known down under as a tawny shark. Almost everywhere else it's called a
nurse shark. It's a bottom feeder with an unusually docile nature. It does have one
unpleasant characteristic though. If it does bite it clamps on like a bulldog.
Only death makes it leave go. Even then the jaws may have to be prized open.
The leopard shark is a close relative of our own dogfish, often politely known as
rock salmon. It may not have occurred to you that the fried fish you often get
with your chips is really a small shark, though rather larger the leopard is a
member of the dogfish or smoothhound family.
And so we come to the shark shaped sharks, the ones that understandably
inspire terror. The sharks with undershot jaws and triangular dorsal fins usually
shown menacingly cutting the surface. The sharks in fact whose habits and
behavior menacing and otherwise we shall be watching here.
These are remoras, shark suckers hitching a ride behind the dorsal fin.
The shark has been in close contact with sharks off Rangiroa for hundreds of years,
often in too close contact. Six years ago a shark almost completely tore the calf
muscle from the right leg of this Polynesian spear fisherman. Yet the shark
was still in contact with the shark. The shark was still in contact with the shark
and was still in contact with the right leg of this Polynesian spear fisherman.
Yet he continues to fish for his living, believing that the encounter was just an
unlucky accident and that provided you read the signs right and abide by the
rules, the chances of it happening again are very slight. Of course to make the
sharks have got to abide by the rules also. The fishermen maintain that this is
exactly what the sharks do. They say that both they and the resident sharks are
predators on the fish shoals off Rangiroa and that the sharks seem to
recognize the fact. The rules that have to be obeyed concern the handling of
speared and particularly still struggling fish whenever sharks are
around. Get the catch to the surface quickly, get under cover of the boat as
soon as possible. These are elementary and obvious
precautions. More important is the fact that the fishermen have come to
recognize through years of experience when a shark means trouble. They can tell
by its swimming attitude and body posture. Of course an occasional fish has
to be sacrificed to the rival fishermen. It's a small price to pay for
coexistence. That the human fishermen can coexist at all is due entirely to
their instinctive recognition of what triggers off shark attack. That recognition
fits closely with what Don Nelson and Richard Johnson have been finding out
scientifically over several years of study as survival discovered when it
joined them to record their work. The first species the team encountered is
extremely active at night. An eerie time to go looking for a shark that averages
eight feet in length.
The white tip reef shark is extremely well equipped with strong cutting and
sawing teeth. It also has an inquisitive and persistent nature. It must therefore
be treated with respect though there are few records of the white tip attacking
man. It tends to hunt the bottom layers for small fish and octopuses. On the
reefs off Rangiroa it is partial to coral caves where it would be only too
easy for the divers to block its escape route. However as we'll see a shark that
means to be aggressive usually gives quite definite signs. These white tips
are swimming in a completely normal and relaxed fashion. Lesson one therefore is
that by no means all of the deadly looking sharks are really dangerous.
Though this is rather like saying that by no means all wild fungi are poisonous
the trick is to recognize the lethal ones. It has to be admitted though that
the reef white tip in this night dive won't expose to any feeding stimuli. That
experiment comes next and with a potentially far more dangerous species.
Sharks do not seem to be territorial or to defend a given part of a reef. However
the team discovered through telemetry that they're much more regular in their
habits than previously suspected. Telemetry means attaching small sonar
transmitters to the subjects of the experiment. With a shark there's only one
way to do this persuade the fish to swallow it.
Don Nelson inserts the transmitter inside a dead baitfish. The mouth of the
fish is sewn up and with luck the shark will soon be sending out underwater
signals. The rest of the equipment consists of a receiver and an underwater
directional hydrophone. The signals transmitted by the shark can be picked
up through a mile or more of water. And here's the intended mobile underwater
sonar station a gray reef shark. Out in the channel between the islands
frequented by grays the transmitter equipped fish is attached to a float and
lowered over the side. One of the diving team goes down to supervise the pickup.
The receiver is switched on and a gray reef shark moves in. Though sharks tear
at large prey they swallow small fish whole. Small transmitters too with any
luck.
The bait is seized. The first shark just takes the tail. Stimulated by the feeding
activity other grays move in. This too is a moment the divers have learned to
watch. At Rangiroa grays have attacked more fishermen than any other species. At
last a gray swallows the head of the bait containing the transmitter and
makes off with it. Telemetry of this and other gray reef sharks in the channel at
Rangiroa has revealed some astonishing things about the regularity of their
habits. Grays which often hunt in packs seem to lead a solitary life on
occasions. One individual spent each part of his day in a different location
moving regularly and on time to his next point of call. In the case of the
transmitter we've just seen swallowed Don Nelson was able to get a fix on the
shark and follow it for some distance.
Let's circle around.
When the signals finally indicated that the researchers had caught up with the
sonar bearing shark the team found the fish had led them to a concentration of
grays at a location they'd never suspected to be occupied by a whole pack.
Among their other amazing abilities sharks are equipped with the most
efficient prey detection devices. Since these same sensory organs are the ones
that put man most at risk it's vital to understand how they work and what they
respond to. To avoid awakening those responses is probably man's best defense
against shark attack. One of the major stimuli that leads sharks to their
prey is sound. The sort of low frequency noises made by a struggling or wounded
fish for instance. Here the team prepares to create such sounds electronically
and within range of a gathering of gray reef sharks. By means of a complex system
of hearing organs in the head and sensitive nerve endings along the center
of their flanks sharks can detect both short and long range sounds. The latter
up to distances of several hundred yards.
Because of the artificially created sounds this is potentially a very
dangerous situation.
To a shark that sound is exactly like the struggle of a wounded fish. The grays
gradually move in and become more curious and excited.
Then come the signs for which the diver must watch. The aggressive display which
seems to have nothing to do with feeding motivation but which often precedes an
attack. It's betrayed by a series of exaggerated swimming movements. Watch
that gray in the background. The swimming action doesn't look very significant
until you break it down and analyze it. Note that lift of the snout and arching
of the back. See the way the petrol fins point stiffly downwards. Johnson and
Nelson call this an agonistic display. The aggression may be directed at another
shark but it's a warning to the diver either to stay still or to back away
slowly. Flight is often likely to trigger attack. Sharks have extremely well
developed senses of taste and smell. When a bundle of dead fish is fixed to the
seabed they can detect their smell from a great distance and soon home in on the
target. With sharks excited by both sound and smell it was time for the diving
team to move to a safe distance. A feeding frenzy can develop in a very
short time with reef white tips, black tip reef sharks and grays all joining in.
At times like this even comparatively harmless species can lash out in
competition with each other. In such a situation there's probably no such thing
as a harmless shark.
Far from harmless was one of the next sharks the team encountered. To find it
they traveled halfway across the Pacific to the coast of California. Sharks aren't
by any means confined to tropical seas. This blue shark is caught around the
south coast of Britain. It's not by nature a man eater though the blue is
the very model of what most people think a killer shark should look like. It eats
fish but of course not these particular fish. They're probably following it
closely to feed on the scraps left over from the shark's own meals. They're safe
if they stay where they are. As a fish eater the blue is equipped with all the
wonderful hunting devices that sharks have evolved over 350 million years. That
large eye gives fair sight at least when spotting movement rather than shape.
Nasal pits detect smells more diluted than one part per million. Along the
flank, this is a Mako, there's a row of nerve endings and sensitive pits called
the lateral line. These can detect movement of prey at close ranges.
Motive power comes mainly from a tail whose upper lobe is usually far larger
than the lower one. The downward drive of this causes the shark to plane forward
on its flattened under surface and wing like pectoral fins. A great deal remains
to be learned about sharks, particularly about their sensory apparatus. To carry
out a series of experiments mainly on the blue shark, the underwater team
journeyed from Rangiroa Island in mid-pacific to a group of islands off
the California coast, Santa Catalina and San Clemente. The water off the
Californian coast in the region of San Diego is quite warm enough to suit
several species of sharks. Not only warm but rich, rich in underwater vegetation
and rich in the fish life on which blues and other more dangerous sharks live.
Let's take a quick look at what these animals are doing here in Havana
This queer looking creature is a large bat ray.
Californian sea lions hunt the giant kelp beds. Sea lion mothers are no lovers of sharks. There
is at least one species here, the mako, that sometimes eats their pups. Fear of sharks is
a possible reason for this sea lion cow's aggressiveness to the camera.
So these were the waters in which our team was going to work. The shark cage was necessary,
because you can never be quite sure, six miles off San Diego, what is going to turn up. In charge
of photography was Stan Waterman, and behind him Chuck Nicklin and Howard Hall, all extremely
experienced in working with sharks. Clarice Prang, a young scientist studying locomotion,
and the by-par of sharks joined the team. The safety cage was able to ascend and descend like
a lift by means of compressed air. Attracted by ground baiting from the boat with oily dead
fish, a very large blue shark was early on the scene. It's always a gamble where the sharks are
going to turn up when you want them. Once one fish comes to the ground bait, others are likely
to follow. So the whole photographic team goes over the side to meet their guests.
When a team as large as this is working with sharks, it's only too easy for one of them to
be surprised by an unexpected attack. So the group includes safety men, whose job is to watch for
danger. They're armed with explosive powerheads, only to be used in extreme emergency. These
transparent Chinese lanterns are primitive organisms called colonial salps. Primitive
they may be, but salps were one of the first creatures to have a rudimentary backburn.
On the very first dive, the team struck it lucky. Big blues detecting the smell of the
ground bait began to show up in considerable numbers. As sharks go, blues have a pleasant
disposition, though it never does to take this for granted. When excited in a feeding frenzy,
even they are likely to lash out. Nor should a diver be fooled by that undershot mouth.
A blue shark doesn't have to roll on its back to bite any more than does any other
shark. A moveable jaw that pushes the teeth forward sees to that. When a shoal of food
fish appears, the danger men keep an extra sharp lookout. The attitude of the apparently
docile blues could change. Nevertheless, the cage is basically not to escape from them. But
this is something different, a potentially lethal hammerhead. The shark that wears its
eyes on storks has a bad reputation for attacking man. This hammerhead is about 10 feet long. The
horizontal plane on which the eyes are mounted doesn't hinder the hammerhead when it comes to
biting. The hammerhead soon fades away, but the unpleasant character who follows it has come to
stay. A big Mako. This is what the team had been hoping to film and the reason they had
brought the safety cage. A wise precaution when you look at those teeth. As soon as the Mako
arrived on the scene, several sea lion cows appeared as if to keep their eye on the big
killer who sometimes snatches their pups from around the nearby islands. For a diver,
a shark feeding frenzy is a thing to stay well clear of. The excited feeding activity that
follows was created by heavy baiting with dead fish so that it could be mainly filmed in safety
from the surface. It illustrates a number of fascinating things about shark behavior.
That's a blue savaging the basket containing the ground bait. Watch the swimming action,
large upper lobe of tail driving the shark on those wing like petrel fins. Observe the typical
seizing, shaking and sawing action of the bite. Keeping close to the cage,
the team did film some of the action with the more predictable blues from underwater.
A frenzied blue takes a bite out of a companion. This blue wasn't going to let go at any price,
even risking being hauled out of the water. Watch the jaw open to snatch that fish head.
It's when the water becomes clouded with fragments of tissue and blood that sharks
appear like vultures on a kill. Blues so far, but suddenly there's a stranger in their midst,
a mako. Note the more evenly sized upper and lower lobes of the tail, the shorter jaws,
armed with some particularly ferocious teeth. And here in a small mako are those teeth. Their main
purpose is to hold a fish once it's caught. During the filming of the sequence you've just seen,
diver Steve Early got raked across the head by a shark. Luckily, only his wetsuit hood was
damaged. To kill a shark was the last thing the team wanted. They maintain that recent fiction
and feature films have resulted in divers killing far too many sharks on site or for so-called
sport. Nevertheless, during the filming, the responsibility for protecting the team lies
with the safety men. This
was one case when a mako came too close for comfort. The safety man had to make an instant
decision to fire his powerhead. There's no bullet in it. A blank charge does the damage.
A number of the sharks bore large wounds, which were almost certainly the results of attacks,
probably unintentional by their own kind during feeding frenzies. That's an unusual species of
remora or shark sucker attached to this badly scarred blue. No one has ever tried hand-feeding
blue sharks before. The team found it was fairly safe, provided there wasn't too much fish blood
in the water to excite the sharks to a frenzy.
Let's see if any of��' them areserviceable each other.
Anyone who wishes to discourage unwelcome attentions from a shark is advised not to grab it by the fins.
Even a small fish is too strong to hold, and it gets rather angry.
A safer way to deal with a boisterous shark is to seize it by the nose.
This one temporarily went limp.
Richard Johnson, one of the team's advisors, advocates banging an attacking shark on the nose as a last resort.
The nose is where many of its sensory systems are concentrated.
During this part of the filming, casualties were fortunately light.
Cameraman Howard Hall came too close to a blue shark when it was shaking its prey.
He got away with a slightly gashed wrist.
Once the shark grounds had been firmly located by those comparatively light-hearted encounters,
the shark was taken away by the camera.
The camera was taken away by the camera.
The camera was taken away by the camera.
The main feeding stimuli, first for smell.
This container was packed with oily fish bits whose effect on sharks has already been seen.
Big makers were soon on the spot.
So were the big blues.
Beyond the fish bits is a container holding a transmitter of low-frequency sounds.
These resemble the vibrations made by struggling or wounded fish.
The waving white object is a visual attractor, a dummy squid.
Squid are a particular shark delicacy.
Which of the three known shark attractors would achieve the most response?
The electronic fish begins in simulated struggles.
At the first attempt, a number of sharks arrived and milled around indiscriminately.
This was thought to be because too much fish oil had accidentally been released.
The next day, the experiment was tried when there were known to be no sharks in the immediate area.
The result, though far from conclusive, was more interesting.
A single blue arrived.
It approached the sonar device.
Then it headed for the fish baited lure, attracted by the oily smell.
It nosed this for some time.
Then it made off as if to inspect the other attractors.
Having circled the visual signal and apparently dismissed it,
it became strongly attached to the audio imitation of a struggling fish and actually mouthed the transmitter.
Of course, such tests have to be carried out at length and with many different species.
But this blue shark does seem to suggest that it finds the sound of a wounded fish irresistible.
It doesn't care for the visual enticement of the beckoning squid.
This backs up the belief that shark's eyesight is used mainly in the initial approach.
Unless it then finds attractive sounds or smells, it probably doesn't stay around long.
Scientist Clarisse Prang's study concerns shark locomotion, the precise manner in which they swim,
also the bite power of their jaws.
Clarisse worked mainly from inside the cage.
She takes her bulky slow motion camera from a team mate.
To give her the close up she needs, the baits were attached directly to the outside of the cage,
one of them containing a bite gauge.
Straight away Clarisse began to wonder who was watching whom.
Chuck Nicklin adjusts the fish inside which one bite gauge has been planted.
The gauge consists of a metal rod surrounded by ball bearings.
The amount by which the rod is dented by the ball bearings
gives a reading in pounds per square inch of force exerted.
Soon there is a fine gathering of sharks around.
It's typical of sharks when unsure of themselves that they circle the prey,
getting closer and closer as their confidence builds.
Another piece of behaviour that divers would do well to remember.
Eventually when the circle gets small enough and their confidence big enough,
they usually move in for the kill.
In this case it's the closeness of bait to cage that is disconcerting them.
But as will be seen, they eventually overcome their apprehension.
Here comes the first attack on the bite gauge.
Watch how the shark's eyelids close, presumably to protect the eye when it shakes the bait.
This big blue has taken an ordinary fish bait,
but the nearer one has got a second bite gauge.
The tube can be seen nearly out of the fish as the shark shakes the bait.
In fact this small blue was more intent on shaking than biting,
and eventually shook the gauge right out of the fish.
Chuck Nicklin was able to retrieve the gauge in order to load it inside another bait.
While he did so, he was besieged by sharks, practically storming the cage to get at the base.
Another fish.
Oh!
This blue has the tail end of one of the fish it has just swallowed sticking out of a gill
slit. On the last day of filming off San Diego the big Makos grew bold enough to turn up in
force around the cage. The bite gauge was waiting for them and as if anxious to show the blues that
they really understood what a shark bite is all about they eventually gave a beautiful performance.
Look at the trailing edge of this Makos dorsal and pectoral fins and you'll see the streamer
like parasites there. A little discouragement until both cameras are ready. Those are parasites
behind the anal fin too.
At last both cameramen are ready to film but now the Mako is reluctant. At the first attempt
the shark simply cuts the rope. Finally a perfect grab. These Mako bites were later
analyzed. The tips of the shark's teeth were found to have exerted a pressure of 8,000 pounds
per square inch. These then are some of the facts about those fabulous jaws. Terrifying as sharks
are to most people they are also wonderful and beautiful creatures and their menace must be kept
in proportion. Fewer than a hundred shark attacks on man occur yearly and less than half of these
are fatal. On the other hand 300 people a year die from bee stings in the United States alone
though it must be said that a lot more people are exposed to bees than to sharks. Thanks to the work
of men like Don Nelson and Richard Johnson we are learning that sharks are not completely
unpredictable killers. Recent discoveries about shark behavior will certainly help to save human
lives provided you can remember how to behave when faced by a hungry shark.
The world of survival. This highly acclaimed award-winning series is now available on video.
Building into a truly unique library collection. The world of survival captures some of the most
exciting wildlife stories ever filmed and camera teams have often risked their lives in the process.
Take a closer look now at some of the other exciting survival videos currently available.
The Lions of Etosha was filmed in Etosha National Park and concentrates on one pride consisting of
a 19 strong family protected by two huge males. We see them bring up their young, the hunts,
the kills. This film is credited as one of the most complete studies of lions ever made.
Castor is a beaver and his fascinating life story is told in the world of the beaver. Over 18 months
of filming spread over more than three years went into the making of this film superbly told by
Henry Fonda and set against the background of the North American Rocky Mountains.
Another unique survival story can be found in Gorilla. Narrated by David Niven, this is the story
of one man's struggle to protect a small population of gorillas high in the African rainforests and his
efforts to be accepted by them as a friend. Survival now takes you to the very top of the
world to meet the polar bear, a huge but graceful animal who has come to symbolize life in the frozen
Arctic. We follow a family across the ice with the birth of cubs in spring. We see the young
at play and we see them learning to hunt for themselves. The humpback whales. This is a
remarkable moving portrait of a mysterious and intriguing giant. It has a brain over five times
the size of man's and is also known as the singing whale. The strange sounds it utters have the
quality of music to the human ear. Tiger Tiger is the most complete documentary ever
attempted on these beautiful but lethal animals. The survival team have filmed him stalking,
swimming, hunting at night and even lying in jungle rivers to cool in the heat of the day.
Narrated by Kenneth Moore, you'll want to watch Tiger Tiger again and again. Meet the wonderful
kangaroo. When Captain Cook's expedition brought back the first sketches of kangaroos from Botany
Bay, they were ridiculed as fakes. Today the kangaroo is recognized as the national animal
of Australia and this video demonstrates as never before the astonishing grace and power of these
huge beasts. The Year of the Wildebeest is a masterpiece of filming that took two years
of continuous work. The results are here in this video as we witness the annual migration
of half a million wildebeest filmed by Alan Root and narrated by James Mason.
Meet the orangutan in this survival special. No more than 10,000 of them remain, possibly as
few as 5,000 and this special takes a close look at these endearing animals, showing them to have
many human characteristics. Peter Ustinov narrates this rare and intimate study.
Come into the deep Pacific and meet the shark. This time the survival crew tried to prove that
not all of these fearsome predators are killers. Divers are seen hand-feeding sharks with tip
bits and one diver actually grabs hold of one by its fin. Could they be sadly misunderstood
creatures or are they all as deadly as jaws? At last the world of survival has been captured
on video for the whole family to enjoy again and again and again.