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AnimalsTranscript
00:11Now, on the world of National Geographic, shark. The very word conjures up images of
00:18savage beauty, a deadly creature brilliantly adapted to dominate this icy realm. Yet nearly
00:26900 different varieties of shark inhabit our planet. Through hundreds of millions of years,
00:32their evolution has resulted in a stunning diversity of behavior and design.
00:41Even as we fear them, we are irresistibly drawn to their cold perfection. Join us as we come
00:47face to face with the beauty and the terror, shark encounters.
00:52Next, on the world of National Geographic, 400 million years ago, the sharks and their
01:13relatives began an extraordinary evolution. Through the ages, their design and behavior
01:19have been honed to perfection. And today, these animals elicit more fear and fascination than
01:25any other creature in the sea, and perhaps on Earth. I think that's because we know so
01:31little of the way they live. They inhabit a world that we can only visit. And of course,
01:36they can be dangerous. I know because I've studied them and spent years trying to film
01:42their natural behavior. And it is that behavior that most fascinates me.
01:58There are nearly 900 different kinds of sharks and related species, the skates and stingrays. But
02:05only a handful are potentially harmful to man. The gray reef shark is one. These sharks exhibit
02:11a surprising and spectacular behavior that I learned about the hard way.
02:18I think it's impossible for me to tell you how I feel emotionally right now. This is the
02:23first time I've returned to Aniwetok Atoll since the single most extraordinary event in my
02:28life took place in the lagoon right out there. I was scuba diving with a friend of mine that
02:34was about 50 feet. It was a beautiful day, a beautiful dive. Everything was going according
02:38to plan and I was taking still pictures. There was a variety of sharks around and they were
02:44coming particularly close. And as a matter of fact, I remember thinking, boy, this is a
02:48great role. I'm getting good close-ups of this fish. Then we reached the edge of the pinnacle
02:53and several gray reef sharks appeared. One of them in particular, it was a five-foot female,
02:59was going through a very dramatic posture where its nose was up, its pectoral fins were lowered,
03:04its mouth slightly open, and I looked at it. And my immediate reaction was, this was a warning
03:09I was seeing, that it is a threat posture. And the more I looked at it, the more injured it
03:16appeared. So I took its picture. The moment the strobe fired, so did the shark. And it broke out
03:22of the posture before the mirror and the camera even returned so that I could see through the viewfinder
03:27again. And it halved the distance between us. So all I could do was just push the camera out toward
03:33it. And at that point, it seemed like things were happening in slow motion. I could see the shark
03:38coming right at me. And right as it got to the camera, it started opening its mouth and pushed
03:43the camera to the side, which naturally presented my elbow. And again, in slow motion, as though it had
03:49rehearsed it a hundred times, just grabbed my arm in its mouth, shook and took off the top of my
03:54arm.
03:55And the shark swam away in the same posture.
04:03Now, you might think this would keep me well away from sharks. But I know I caused that attack.
04:09I made a mistake. I ignored a clear warning from that shark, and I learned a great deal from the
04:14incident. I'm still learning. I now know you can predict certain behavior, like the threat posture.
04:20So I'm going to recreate that attack to show you what I mean. But this time, I'll be fully protected
04:28by a stainless steel suit and plexiglass canopy, so neither the shark nor I will be hurt.
04:38This gray reef shark is swimming normally. But if I pursue it, it will change its swimming
04:43style into an exaggerated one, a warning for me to back off.
04:51As I chase the shark, its swimming speed slows. The pectoral fins on the side of its body are
04:57lowered, and it moves its head from side to side. That's a fully developed threat posture.
05:02I could stop right now, and it would just swim away. But I'll keep pushing.
05:08This is exactly as I remember it 13 years ago, and I can't believe it's happening in front
05:13of me again. But I'm ready, at least in theory.
05:44That's the kind of dramatic behavior that's happening in front of me.
05:46I've cemented my long-standing interest in the Chondrichthians, the group that includes
05:51sharks, skates, stingrays, and the lesser-known Chimeras.
05:58I've been lucky enough to film aspects of their lives that few people have ever seen.
06:02I think you'll be surprised by their diversity and abilities. I also think your image of a shark
06:08shark will change. I know mine has. For a start, they come in an amazing variety of shapes and sizes.
06:28Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear. And he shows them pretty white.
06:39When the shark bites with his teeth, dear. Scarlet pillows start to spread.
06:48Fancy gloves, though. Where's my teeth, dear? So there's not a trace of red.
07:00On the sidewalk, Sunday mornings, lies a buried oozing life.
07:09Someone sneakin' round the corner. Is that someone back tonight?
07:28All these creatures are sharks or their close relatives.
07:33So what makes a shark a shark?
07:36You've just seen a sample of their diversity.
07:39But there are a few characteristics that they all share.
07:42The key feature is their skeleton. It's made of cartilage. Tough, flexible, and lighter than bone.
07:52Their most famous or infamous feature must be their teeth.
07:57Shark's teeth are as varied as their body designs and razor sharp.
08:00And they have a unique means of keeping them that way.
08:07Like a spiky conveyor belt coming from well within the jaw, rows of new teeth emerge to replace the broken
08:14ones as often as every two weeks.
08:20As a matter of fact, their entire bodies are covered with tiny tooth-like scales called dermal denticles, which look
08:26similar to this.
08:27It makes a very tough skin that has even been used as sandpaper.
08:33Instead of a single pair of gill slits, like other fish, sharks have five, six, or even seven.
08:41And unlike most fishes, which reproduce by releasing countless eggs and sperm into the water,
08:47sharks have internal fertilization, like mammals, using these claspers.
08:54But it's their sensory systems that I find the most astonishing.
08:58Sharks have all five senses we have, plus a couple more.
09:01One is unique in the animal kingdom, and it's called the ampullae of Lorenzini.
09:07We're still learning how they use this system, but we do know the basics.
09:12All living things generate electrical fields.
09:16Sharks have developed an incredibly acute sense to detect these tiny charges at close range.
09:22Small pits concentrated on the lower side of the head are the openings to this complex electro-reception system.
09:29As the shark nears its prey, these micro-electric fields envelop its head
09:34and enter the small pits passing into jelly-filled canals.
09:44The canals lead to a sac lined with tiny receptive hair cells.
09:50Here, the electricity is transformed into nervous impulses and sent through nerve bundles to the brain.
10:03The entire system, made up of thousands of ampullae, creates a fantastic directional antenna,
10:10telling the shark precisely where its prey is without the need for sight, smell, or touch.
10:24Here are the pits on a live shark.
10:31The clearest use of electro-reception I know of is in the Hawaiian Islands,
10:36where juvenile hammerheads find otherwise invisible prey.
10:41When I set out to film this, I had no idea what I would see, since no one even knew
10:45it happened.
10:46But I suspected it strongly enough to take a gamble.
10:51As night falls on the reef, most daytime fish hide in the coral to sleep.
10:56But these wrasse have a unique way of bedding down.
11:06This is a good way to avoid predators.
11:11Unless hammerheads are around.
11:40You can clearly see his technique.
11:43Right there, he drops his lower jaw, dragging it through the sand to scoop out the unwary fish.
11:49And that strange head?
11:51It creates a wide surface for the ampullae to spread across,
11:54so it can scan the sand for buried fish, like a broad metal detector.
12:11Sometimes all the commotion brings sleeping fish out to see what's up.
12:16Not a good idea.
12:41Sharks use electro-reception not only to find food, but to locate mates.
12:46Sharks use electro-reception not only to find food, but to locate mates.
12:46Here in Mexico, where the desert meets the Sea of Cortez,
12:50I film the breeding behavior of stingrays, which are essentially flattened sharks.
12:56For about two weeks each winter, female stingrays come here to mate.
13:00They may band together, often creating huge piles of up to a hundred, where they wait until they're ready.
13:07But the males are always game, so a reluctant female uses her spine to keep them at bay.
13:14Or, she may hide by burying.
13:21But with their electro-receptive talents, the males can detect the buried females,
13:26and, with persistence, they eventually mate.
13:51It may seem unchivalrous, but the male bites her to hold on and has developed special teeth which help him
13:58keep his grip.
14:00Near his tail are the male's claspers, which are extensions of the pelvic fins that sharks and rays use like
14:06a penis.
14:06He has two of these, but he only uses one at a time.
14:12It's easy to understand how stingrays find each other in a shallow bay, but what about sharks that swim in
14:18open water?
14:21A chance encounter in Hawaii's leeward islands provided a clue.
14:25I was filming gray reef sharks when I noticed a group of reef white tips swimming in unusually close formation.
14:32A female was being pursued by five or six males, so I followed.
14:44Finally, one of the males swims right up to her, and right there, grabs her pectoral fin, and courtship begins.
14:53Although it looks a bit violent, females have a thicker skin than males to compensate for this.
15:01The other males never left the scene.
15:04Scientists suspect that females release a scent like a mammal in heat, and the males can detect it from great
15:11distances, and there's stiff competition.
15:13Here we go.
15:22Here we go.
16:02I couldn't believe my luck.
16:05I've never seen anything like it.
16:07Far from terrifying, this was a beautiful and actually quite sensual picture of a malign creature.
16:35These gray reef sharks were in a more advanced stage of reproduction.
16:39This was the same species that attacked me.
16:42But ironically, I feel more comfortable encountering a school of gray reefs rather than just one.
16:48They seem to have a purpose, and it doesn't involve me.
16:53These are all females and probably all pregnant.
16:56They enter shallow water to release their young where there are fewer large predators.
17:01It's suspected they stop feeding shortly before pupping,
17:04and biologist Rocky Strong has an unorthodox way of finding out if that's true.
17:16Okay, lift them up.
17:19All right, sir.
17:22Here we go.
17:24Okay.
17:29Fast guy, you gotta go.
17:34Okay, I got this pretty good.
17:36Okay, one more up.
17:40Okay, all right.
17:41Okay, she's pretty classic.
17:44There you go.
17:50Look at that.
17:56There it is.
17:57You're just gonna have to hold back on it.
17:59Okay.
18:02Okay, she still looks all right.
18:05Tell you one thing, it's a nice technique as long as it's you with the arm down.
18:10Okay, I'm down.
18:11I'm down.
18:12A minute.
18:13That noise of absolutely nothing in the stomach.
18:19I don't feel anything.
18:21I don't even feel any scales or warm, too.
18:26That's your arm inside of a live bed.
18:27She looks okay, though.
18:30What does it feel like?
18:32Slimy.
18:34Absolutely nothing in here.
18:35Nothing.
18:36No scales, no otoliths.
18:38Let's get her back in the water.
18:42Yeah, she looks good.
18:43Boy, she's still closing.
18:45I'm crazy.
18:46I just got my hand between her snout and my pipe.
18:50Okay.
18:51Okay.
18:53Okay, you got that undone?
18:54Mm-hmm.
18:56Okay.
18:57All right.
18:58Bye.
19:00Scientists used to kill the animal to sample its gut.
19:03At least Rocky leaves them with just a sore mouth.
19:06It does appear they stop feeding.
19:09But why?
19:15I found a possible answer in the Florida Keys.
19:19I found a possible answer in the Florida Keys.
19:40Another fish does it quite like this.
19:41You can see the umbilical cords trailing from this female.
19:56I felt privileged to witness this intimate moment.
20:00It certainly counters the notion that sharks are merely ruthless killers when you see them
20:05giving birth.
20:09In fact, now it was clear to me why many sharks lose the impulse to feed.
20:14It prevents the babies from becoming their next meal.
20:19Once born, they're on their own.
20:22None of the sharks provide parental care, unless you consider not eating your young parental care.
20:30Live-bearing animals invest a lot of time and energy to produce only a few young, but
20:36their offspring are well-developed and much more likely to survive.
20:42The pups stay in the shallow bay for a few weeks to grow larger and stronger, but I was amazed
20:48to see that
20:49within moments of birth, they're just like miniature versions of the adults and just as agile and alert.
20:58That obviously isn't the case here with these baby sharks.
21:01They just hatched from eggs and are completely uncoordinated.
21:05Their frantic behavior may last several days.
21:10This is an adult of the same species, a type of cat shark, curiously called a chained dogfish.
21:16They live at about a thousand feet in the western Atlantic.
21:20When I decided to film egg laying, the most primitive form of reproduction in sharks,
21:24I chose this beautiful shark because she has such a clever way of laying her eggs.
21:29When she's ready, long sticky tendrils attached to the egg cases emerge from her body.
21:34Then it's just a matter of finding a suitable hitching post to help her pull out the eggs.
21:57And this is an adult of the same type of cat shark...
21:58In a very natural way, she's also a patient at the end of the egg.
21:58You look really well.
21:59You look really beautiful at the end of the air.
21:59That's beautiful.
21:59But that's beautiful.
22:00That's beautiful.
22:00A nice little bit.
22:03I'm trying to have to have it ready to do for the Küche.
22:05I'm trying to have to do so much bigger.
22:06And I was trying to have to do so much more than that one of the outer edges.
22:07It's a half that we've taken up.
22:16Secured, both the tendrils and the egg case harden, forming a protective capsule for the
22:21young shark.
22:27The female goes through this ritual, laying two eggs at a time, every two weeks throughout
22:32the year.
22:34She fertilizes them with sperm that she can store in her body for up to 12 months.
22:50Some of these egg cases wash up on the beach.
22:53They're called mermaids' purses, and it is inside that the baby shark develops.
23:01You can see its heart working at only two months.
23:08And by five months, it begins to look somewhat like a fish, only at this stage its feathery
23:13gills are on the outside.
23:16The embryo begins to resemble a chained dogfish at eight months.
23:21After hatching, its only protection is its deep water habitat.
23:25In the shallow reef, I'm afraid it would be eaten immediately.
23:33And at ten months, freedom at last.
23:42The most beautiful and intricate egg case I've ever seen belongs to the horn shark.
23:47And this one is in the shallow water.
23:49Apparently, the mother uses the tough spirals encircling the case to wedge it into the rocks
23:54for safe keeping.
23:57The horn shark is common in the shallow waters off the coast of California, where it feeds
24:02on invertebrates like spiny sea urchins.
24:04Its rubbery mouth has flattened teeth to deal with its prickly lunch.
24:08And if you don't like sharks, this little guy might change your mind.
24:15After hatching, it darkens to blend with its surroundings.
24:18But it has an even better defense, a sharp spine in front of each dorsal fin, just in case.
24:25It has an even better defense, a sharp spine in front of each dorsal fin, just in case.
24:38Meet the angel shark.
25:17I have to admit, the angel shark is one of my favorites.
25:21I was astonished as I watched this thing feed.
25:30This has to be one of the most bizarre sharks I've ever seen.
25:34It's also the focus of one man's research.
25:41Pursuing his interest in feeding behavior, when his arm isn't down a shark's throat, Rocky
25:47Strong studies the angel shark around California's Channel Islands.
25:51He's interested in what triggers that explosive feeding response.
25:55And again, he's designed a unique way of finding out.
26:01Rocky sets up a pulley system that allows him to pass a variety of items over a resting angel shark,
26:08trying to determine just what its cue is.
26:10He knows it's an ambush predator, and may lie motionless for days until an unsuspecting fish ventures too close.
26:35Rocky has passed scores of different prey overhead, including rubber models like this one.
26:41And he thinks that it's mainly sight that triggers the angel shark.
26:49It takes virtually everything.
26:52And then decides whether to keep it.
27:10Angel sharks get their name because of the flattened wing-like pectoral fins on the side of their bodies.
27:16Certainly not for their behavior.
27:18I'm just glad they don't get much bigger.
27:36While the angel shark relies on camouflage and surprise, this animal stalks its prey.
27:42And its technique earned it the nickname, the night shocker.
27:50Electric rays not only detect electricity, but generate it.
27:54Lots of it.
27:55Maybe enough to knock a man out.
28:03When there's an electric ray around at nighttime, we flicker the dive lights.
28:07So I knew there was an electric ray nearby.
28:09And I held my regulator in my mouth, and I started to rise up, and I rose right into an
28:14electric ray that was hovering above me.
28:16And it went zap, zap, zap, three times.
28:20The first one was really powerful, then about a second later there was another shock, not as powerful, then about
28:25a second later there was another shock, not as powerful.
28:28And then either the electric ray swam a ray, or I had enough sense to get away from it, but
28:32that was it.
28:33Well, it's been my experience filming animals, especially fish, that you get near them, they run from you.
28:41These guys are just the opposite.
28:42As soon as you start getting close to them, not only do they not run, but they actually flip around
28:47and attack.
28:48Probably anything that's going to come up and bother an electric ray will be deterred very quickly.
28:53Yeah.
28:53You are wondering why electric rays don't swim very fast.
28:58Yeah.
28:59And I think the bottom line is they don't have to.
29:03I think they operate at the speed of light.
29:08In the Eastern Pacific, Dick Bray and Chris Lowe are studying this ray's electrical output.
29:13Dr. Bray discovered that they use electric discharges not only for defense, but also for feeding, and I agreed to
29:21join them on one of their research trips.
29:23I would later regret it.
29:26The scientists have developed a special wand to record the electrical pulses generated by the ray.
29:31Those short popping sounds are electrical discharges used as defense.
29:40But when the ray is presented with a fish, the discharge is different.
29:45Using electroreception, it locates its prey and then releases a longer burst of electricity to stun it.
29:56It can also fire a photographic flashbulb.
30:03In the daytime, when the rays were recharging their batteries, I found that science and filmmaking don't always mix.
30:25They went for me, and I didn't enjoy it.
30:30Apparently, they preferred the slight electrical output of my camera housing to the scientists' electrodes.
30:36It wasn't that painful, but it was frightening because I knew at any moment it could get a lot worse.
30:42And it was a sharp reminder of why these fish are so difficult to study and film.
31:01Perhaps less shocking but still surprising was the feeding behavior of reef whitetip sharks in Costa Rica.
31:09This population spends most of the day resting right out in the open.
31:19Elsewhere, I had always seen them in caves.
31:22Before scientists observed them lying motionless like this, they believed that sharks would suffocate if they stopped swimming.
31:28That they lacked muscles to pump water over their gills.
31:44The reef whitetips may move only a few meters, then gently land back on the sand.
31:55They seem to do little more than lie around, so I considered moving on.
32:00But that would have been a mistake.
32:02You need patience to learn much about sharks, and this time mine would pay off.
32:32As the day ended, activity picked up.
32:40A 35-foot whale shark, the largest fish in the sea, passed overhead.
32:46It was a young one.
32:48They can grow to 50 feet.
32:51This one sported a beard of remoras, harmless hitchhikers.
32:55It was heading offshore, probably to feed on plankton.
33:03And at night, the whitetips came alive.
33:08Now, we're going to take the birds with a woman in the sea.
33:09We're gonna get lost.
33:15We're going to get lost.
33:15Then we're going to get lost.
33:18We have to take the birds, too.
33:19This isoused.
33:27Hello!
33:36This is by the This is a
33:40natural hunting and feeding and sharks has rarely been seen and now i was really glad i stayed
33:45around the lazy daytime behavior of the white tips left me totally unprepared for what i saw at night
33:54they reminded me of eels slithering through the reef
33:58it was difficult to film them i never knew where to point the camera next
34:07so
34:17so
34:18so
34:18so
34:18so
34:22so
34:29so
34:30so
34:33so
34:37so
34:38so
34:51sharks are full of surprises but for me the greatest surprise came in 1990
34:57that's when a major discovery gripped scientists and an entire community in southern california
35:02and the press loved it
35:11it's called megachasma palagios megamouth for short
35:15sea creature millions of years old yet we never knew it existed until recently
35:20it had never been photographed until yesterday 14 feet long and 1200 pounds
35:27of mystery
35:28but today marine biologists were trying to unravel some of that mystery
35:32not like any shark you've ever seen the skin feels the same because they have these dermal
35:37denticles little um like teeth all over the skin and the roughness of the skin is there
35:44fins are all right but the mouth is all wrong you know you think of a typical shark kind of
35:48cornucle with big teeth this has a huge mouth with just rubbery lips
35:54actually the newscaster was wrong it was over 16 feet long and eight feet in girth
35:59i measured it i'll never forget that moment being the first to see an animal species underwater
36:06this was only the sixth megamouth ever found and the first studied alive
36:11in fact the species had escaped detection altogether until 1976
36:17but equally impressive was the public's reaction i've never seen such an outpouring of sympathy for
36:23a shark hundreds of people turned up and spoke out for megamouth to be released which is exactly what
36:29happened but not before it was fitted with an ultrasonic transmitter and there it is the white tube
36:35right under the dorsal fin
36:40i had waited all day for its release hoping megamouth would survive its capture
36:45and i have to say that it gave me a tremendous feeling seeing it head straight down to its deep
36:50water home
36:56and that feeling was shared by doctors don nelson and bob lavenberg who were equally excited about
37:02this rare find but from a scientific point of view which way he's off the starboard bow
37:11you know don this thing is at uh about 140 145 meters right now how deep has it gone what's
37:18the deepest
37:19step that's gone we have seen it on this trip up to about 160 meters approximately the transmitters
37:26were telling them that the shark is a vertical migrator traveling from the surface to the depths each day
37:31probably following a thick layer of plankton that it feeds on i think megamouth is a poignant reminder
37:38that even with all our sophisticated technology there's still a lot to learn about our oceans
37:43imagine a 16 foot animal going undetected for so long what else is down there
37:56these thin layers of rock in central montana hold the remains of what used to be down there
38:03many believe that the oceans are the earth's last frontier
38:08dr dick lund agrees but his oceans have become stone he reads these ancient layers like the pages of a
38:16book gaining startling insight into the history of sharks it's ironic that here in these dusty layers
38:23this man's finding perhaps more species of sharks than anyone working in the oceans
38:38this was once a shallow tropical bay 320 million years ago it was south of the equator
38:45filled with sea life and the dominant fish were the sharks
38:55you know every time i turn over a rock around here
38:58i have the chance of finding something very very different a new piece of a puzzle a new part of
39:08recreating a bay traveling backward in time to a time when the sharks were
39:16kings of the ocean kings of the rivers kings of the lakes
39:31when these layers were deposited the dinosaurs were well over a hundred million years in the future
39:37the first mammals were 250 million years away and insects were just learning to fly
39:43dick lund is finding that sharks were already incredibly diverse
39:47and what he is learning is changing our stereotyped view of sharks
39:55he's found they experimented with myriad designs and what we have today is the stripped down
40:01streamlined version incorporating all the successful features of the past
40:06i've been digging here for 22 years and i've always needed help
40:11recently i've been happy to have the support of volunteers from earthwatch
40:17that have made a big difference because there's a lot of rock that needs to be moved for every fish
40:23you find
40:31i don't think much of the use of the term primitive in regard to sharks
40:38for one thing i think the office of naval research certainly wouldn't call their sensory systems primitive
40:45i think they're still trying to design systems as good as shark systems
40:53they're not primitive there's nothing primitive about them my sharks are 320 million years older okay
41:00if you want to play that game you could call them primitive more primitive than the ones we have today
41:08but there's another argument if you really want to use it human species has only been around for
41:15maybe what 400 000 years maybe some people would argue 40 000 years
41:22that's fairly primitive
41:26he starts by finding the pieces laying them all out and assembling the complete fossil
41:31the most fun is actually in doing the reconstruction getting it down on paper and doing the actual
41:46inking and the stippling and the shading and bringing everything into complete detail and seeing the final
41:53thing and see all of the wonderful things that you just don't see in modern animals anymore and just
41:59breathe some life into the dry old bones and these things are just not dead anymore they're alive
42:26in the same way that sharks are the distillation hundreds of millions of years of experiments and how to build
42:31a predator
42:32the chimeras are also the highly specialized result of hundreds of millions of years of experimentation
42:40but for the chimeras the experiments seem to have stopped eons ago the chimera is probably
42:47the most primitive of the living sharks today it's a paradox that such a beautiful creature
42:52lives at such depth and darkness that it cannot show off its true colors
42:57they're egg layers but unlike the cat shark with its elaborate procedure the chimeras simply drop their eggs
43:05the males have an interesting feature that fleshy lobe between his eyes is a third clasper
43:11he uses it during mating allegedly to hold on
43:17one of the other lessons you learn is that extinctions have hit the sharks many times
43:23they've come through it each time and fundamentally species come and species go
43:32but a good design like that of sharks goes on forever
43:37and finally here is the culmination of all that evolution has given the sharks this is a tiger shark
43:44streamlined to perfection among the most advanced of the entire group
43:49most of the sharks we've seen are not threatening to man
43:52tiger sharks are different extremely efficient and dangerous predators
44:11i've traveled a thousand miles northwest of the main hawaiian islands to witness a specific event
44:17that for me sums up all the sophistication that the sharks possess
44:23each year thousands of lay sand and black-footed albatross gather on this remote island to breed
44:29i've timed my arrival to film the baby bird's first and most crucial flight
44:34it will mark the beginning of adulthood for some and a tragic end for others
44:42and dark shadows have timed their arrival for the same event
44:47this annual drama is a poignant example of nature and natural selection at work
44:58the baby albatross prepare for this journey by strengthening their wings in the trade winds
45:03practicing flight on the beach they couldn't possibly know what fate awaits them
45:09if their first flight ends in the shallows
45:16so
45:17so
45:20so
45:25so
45:32so
45:36so
45:38so
45:38so
45:39so
45:56the sharks would snatch the birds from the surface and crush or drown them
46:01sometimes they'd just release them in circle presumably waiting for the birds to die
46:07then they returned to eat them
46:15the shark's technique allowed me to get these underwater shots
46:19i would swim under the injured and dead birds and wait for the sharks to return
46:26before i decided to put myself in this position i watched the sharks feed for over a week
46:31and noticed they were ignoring common prey like monk seals and sea turtles
46:37it became clear to me that they were only interested in the birds
46:41and so i entered the water with one of the most impressive predators the earth has ever known
46:46the sharks noticed me but for that week allowed me into their world and showed absolutely no
46:52aggressive behavior toward me
46:56i came here hoping to film this predation and i should have been thrilled that i got it
47:01but after spending weeks with these baby birds i was left with very mixed emotions
47:07still i could appreciate the tiger shark strategy they're never seen here except the two weeks when the albatross fledge
47:16how do they know when to arrive how do they navigate to the same beach year after year and how
47:23are they homing in on the birds
47:27you have to admire such a skillful predator taking advantage of a large bounty of easy prey
47:33they do it by making use of a whole battery of sensory systems and that's what makes them so successful
47:41my experience with sharks has left scars but much more importantly it has given me knowledge about these
47:49beautifully designed creatures and i believe knowledge dissipates fear i'm convinced that the more we know
47:57the more we know about them the less we will fear them and we'll realize they are not our enemies
48:32so
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