Sharks: Predators of the Deep (2024)

[bunniefuu]

The Earth's oceans.

With boundless depths

and shadowy creatures,

they are a realm of both fear and mystery.

Deep below the surface

dwell some of the most remarkable species.

One particular type of fish

continues to leave the world in awe,

yet remains heavily misunderstood.

Eaten or hunted merely for sport,

humans have largely abandoned a species

that is far more complex

than the bloodthirsty predators

we've been led to believe.

Known globally as sharks,

these fish deserve a more

nuanced understanding.

With sensationalized stories,

ill*gal fishing,

and the oceans changing

at a record-breaking rate,

the future of sharks is now

more threatened than ever.

Over numerous decades,

sharks have become evil caricatures.

Depicted as mindlessly

ferocious and bloodthirsty,

the media has not shied away

from feeding into the stereotypes

surrounding the species.

The 1975 film "Jaws,"

directed by Steven Spielberg,

was by all accounts a

technical and narrative marvel.

The film featured a police chief,

a marine biologist, and

a local shark hunter

who sought to find and

k*ll a great white shark

which had fatally attacked

some swimmers prior.

Get everybody out!

Upon release,

the public perception on sharks

had changed for the worse.

In a heartbeat, the fish was demonized.

A shark was now known as

a bloodthirsty creature

which only seeks to k*ll,

the devil reincarnated.

What came next was

devastating to shark life.

Although the fear of

sharks predates the film,

the impact "Jaws" had on the human psyche

led to a term being

called the "Jaws" effect.

More films and TV shows would follow,

always depicting sharks

in a negative light

and steadily strengthening the

fear people have of the fish.

Films such as "The Shallows" and "The Meg"

are some of the many

which have fallen victim

to the "Jaws" effect.

In an effort to inform the

misconceptions about sharks,

the series "Shark Week" was established

to promote shark conservation.

However, the hatred of this

fish had become global.

Shark attacks would be pushed

to the media forefront,

when in reality these

attacks were extremely scarce

and on many occasions provoked.

So for most people,

there is, yes, just fear.

It's a sort of one-dimensional

view of the shark.

Increasingly in recent years,

and I'm really, really

thrilled about this,

the shark is being seen as the victim

rather than the threat.

People are beginning to realize

that sharks are being way overfished.

For many, many, many years,

their fins were sliced off to

end up in bowls of fin soup.

And to give you an idea of this,

I was doing some some vox

pops down in the street

in Richmond about 12 years ago

with a presenter called

Miranda Krestovnikoff,

and we were trying to

find people in the street

to give us the stereotype answer

of what sharks meant to them.

We wanted shock, horror, fear.

It was really a struggle.

We were asking people what

they thought about sharks

and they were saying,

"Oh, you must understand,

you know, sharks are being overfished,

sharks are being k*lled.

The real threat is not sharks to humans.

It's humans to sharks."

Which was great news.

It was fantastic, 'cause our

message was getting across.

I would say the shark will always struggle

to lose its image of fear, of attack.

It's just the word.

In parts of China,

Taiwan, and Southeast Asia,

shark fin soup has been a

delicacy since the 1300s.

The process of finning

involved capturing the fish,

slicing off the shark's fin,

and dumping the rest of

the still-living body

back into the ocean.

The fins themselves

became high-value targets

due to their monetary and cultural value.

Shark finning was banned in Europe in 2003

following a UK campaign

to conserve the frighteningly

endangered species.

The finning process is also outlawed

in all high sea tuna fisheries

within Eastern countries such as China,

although shark fins still

continue to be collected

and exported throughout

many different countries.

Sharks have a very

low reproduction rate,

so will commonly produce very few pups.

A great white shark, for example,

typically might produce between three,

maybe 7, 8, 9, maximum maybe 10 pups,

and this doesn't happen very often.

I think the gestation

period for a white shark

is about eight or nine months.

So low production rates,

so very, very, very susceptible

to being overfished.

So you start taking too

many of these animals out

and they don't sexually mature

until I think females are about,

I think females are about

14, males are about 12.

So very difficult for shark populations

to take a lot of fishing pressure.

And certainly through the '90s,

the early part of this century,

when shark fins were being harvested

at an absolutely obscene rate,

you know, not a million, not two million,

tens of millions of fins a

year just being sliced off

to end up in bowls of,

frankly, rather tasteless soup.

And the reason that sort

of started happening

was because of the huge growth

in the Chinese population

that could afford the luxuries.

So suddenly it wasn't just, you know,

the communist politburo

or the top guys who

could afford this stuff;

it was the middle class who

suddenly had a lot of money,

so the whole market went berserk.

And shark's fin soup

went from being something

that people dreamt about

to something that people

served at their weddings

and all sorts of social events.

It was a little bit of sort

of a mark of having made it.

You know, instead of serving caviar

which you might do in this society here,

serve shark fin soup.

And so enormous pressure on sharks.

Sharks were harvested,

tens of millions, hundreds of millions,

and it really does show.

I mean, I've visited

various places in the world

where there are no sharks.

Liz Downey,

maritime expert at the London Aquarium,

says sharks are being slaughtered so fast

soon there won't be any left to fish.

At the moment, the

trade is so unsustainable

that it will end up that

we will no longer have

a fishing trade for sharks if we carry on,

and it may have more

devastating effects than that

in actually resulting in

extinction of some species.

It is the shark's fin,

the mere sight of which

is enough to cause terror,

that threatens to be its downfall.

A trip down London's Chinatown

quickly shows the reason why.

Across the world, particularly

in Asian communities,

there's an insatiable

appetite for shark's fin soup

and other traditional recipes

made from the fin of the k*ller fish.

Environmentalists say we

should care about the shark

because it does a good job

feeding on weak and sick fish,

maintaining nature's

balance in the oceans.

They insist its evil reputation

is largely undeserved.

Since the 1970s,

the shark population saw

a decline like no other.

By 2024, over 71% of

biomass has been overfished.

Each year, over 100

million sharks are k*lled.

According to Nat Geo,

there has been a 79% drop

in the great white family

and 80% drop in thresher sharks

and a 99% drop in bull

sharks, dusky sharks,

smooth hammerheads, and porbeagle sharks.

I grew up in the in the Gulf,

in Kuwait and Bahrain

and places like that,

and sharks were in our lives all the time.

I then led about six shark

expeditions to the Gulf

looking for sharks and we chummed,

so we put stuff in the

water to attract sharks

for over 400 hours

and we only had one large predatory shark.

One.

We found lots of dead

sharks in the markets.

So we were able to study our sharks,

and from a scientific perspective,

the thing worked in that respect,

but that just shows you the

extraordinary rate of depletion

in that particular piece of water.

'Cause when I was a kid

growing up in the Gulf,

sharks were there literally all the time.

It's a treat to see a shark

and it's almost unheard

of now to see a big shark.

You're normally seeing small blacktips

and small reef sharks

and things like that.

So all over the world, I'm

afraid, massively depleted.

And with a species like

the great white shark,

we don't have any idea how many there are.

They're probably much more depleted

even than something like lions.

You read figures with the white shark

of between 3,500 and 5,000

animals in the whole planet.

I mean, that's frightening stuff.

Of course, they don't breathe air

like sort of dolphins, whales

and this, that, and the other,

so more difficult to count.

I mean, more difficult to

get an idea of populations,

but we do know the population

is massively depleted.

Sharks are now going extinct

at an alarming rate.

After the release of "Jaws,"

more fishermen became obsessed

over showing their ability

to k*ll the species.

By taking a small boat out onto the water

or simply fishing from the shore,

catching sharks as large as 500 pounds

was possible with a

reasonably-sized rod and reel.

Alongside people fishing on their own,

people began to sponsor tournaments

to initiate organized

shark fishing for prizes.

The death of a shark was celebrated.

How did the great white shark

become one of the world's

most dominant predators?

The story starts over

380 million years ago

during what was known

as the Devonian Period.

The first shark species

was known the Cladoselache,

although it has also speculated

that this was a type of chimaera

due to its anatomy

consisting of cartilage.

I guess for many, many, many years,

I was really into sharks.

What I wanted to do was

basically save sharks.

I became aware in the 1980s

of the incredible threat

the world shark populations were facing,

mainly due to finning and overfishing.

So for 30-odd years I was

sort of a shark crusader.

When I was eight years

old, I was sent out from UK

where I was at prep school,

boarding school, to Kuwait,

and all I wanted to do was go swimming.

'Cause it was Easter and

it was Easter time here,

so not warm, but really

warm in Kuwait in the Gulf.

And I got there

and my mother said no

swimming outside our house

because there had been a shark attack.

I mean, how exciting is

that to an eight-year-old?

So I was really disappointed

I couldn't go swimming

and I spent virtually the

whole of that Easter holiday

sitting on the garden wall

waiting for a fin to go like that

and hoping there would

be someone in the water.

That's pretty bizarre,

but it's kind of the way

small boys are, you know?

It never happened.

So I was literally hooked

on sharks, and still am.

Though sharks

do not possess bones,

they can still fossilize,

resulting in the spectacular condition

of their skeletons and teeth

which remain in museums today.

As sharks age, calcium salts are deposited

into their skeletal

cartilage to strengthen them.

The jaws of a shark are so solid

one might confuse them for bone.

The skeletal structure allows

the shark to remain light

and their large livers are

filled with low-density oils,

which allows them to keep

buoyant in the ocean.

The curious thing about sharks

is that although they've

evolved massively in some ways,

they're a perfectly evolved animal,

which is why they've survived.

They are an incredible animal

in the sense that they're perfect.

You know, we've got our senses,

touch, smell, taste, et cetera.

They've got our senses plus one.

And if you think about them

swimming through the water,

they look like a fighter plane.

So they look like the

wings out there, you know,

and the tail wing up there,

and they're this thing and

they're covered in little teeth.

The body's covered in little

teeth called dermal denticles.

This means they've got very,

very, very little resistance

going through the water.

They can swim, you know, effortlessly.

If you watch them,

it's just a very chilled-out thing

until something makes 'em

do something different.

Traditionally,

if one was to determine

the age of a shark,

their vertebrae would need to be examined.

The vertebrae contains pairs

of translucent and opaque bands

which can be counted

like the rings of a tree.

Scientists have discovered

the method may be inaccurate

due to the varying nature of

the shark's size and species.

This inaccuracy led to a new

study on deposition rate,

indicating the quantity of bands produced

are in accordance with each

species and size class.

By validating the deposition rate,

the age of a shark be

calculated with more accuracy.

During the Devonian Period,

the ocean was swarming

with ancient marine animals

such as ammonoids, an

extinct form of mollusk.

The trilobites,

an ancient ancestor of

crabs known as arthropods,

were steadily declining,

likely due to their inefficient anatomy.

Abundant fossil remains

show that the trilobites

had segmented bodies

and simple jointed appendages

similar to modern crustaceans.

It was clear to see

that the new age of marine

life was on the horizon.

Species were evolving to

ensure their survival.

Sharks in particular would find themselves

in a very dominant position.

Towards the end of the Devonian Period

came an extinction event so devastating

that it had wiped out 75%

of the Earth's species.

Global temperatures had

reached a height so severe

that the mixing rate of the oceans

had altered between the

surface and lower layers.

The bottom waters experienced

a low reoxygenation rate,

leading to the death

of many ocean species.

We've been here five minutes,

200,000 years actually,

and the way we're going,

we're gonna be very lucky to

be here another few hundred,

let alone 100,00.

So the sharks have been here forever

and we're just a teeny little weeny blip,

and I suspect they'll

be here when we're gone.

The

Carboniferous Period had begun

and is now widely known to

be the golden age for sharks.

The golden age not only set sharks

as dominant predators in the ocean,

but it also gave birth to

many variants of shark.

The Stethacanthus is one

of the stranger types

to roam the sea.

Evolving from the chimaera lineage,

this particular shark had developed

a distinctive anvil-shaped

fin on its back.

By the end of the golden age,

the seas were swarming

in a presumed 45 different shark families.

From the harsh temperature change

during the Permian-Triassic Period

to the alleged meteorite

which k*lled the dinosaurs

in the Jurassic period,

it is clear that sharks

have stood the test of time.

The shark species have

miraculously survived

five major extinction events.

Although a contributing factor,

this wasn't just due

to the sheer hardiness

and durability of the fish.

Sharks are malleable.

Their ability to survive

lies in their exploitation

of different parts of the water column,

from the shallow waters

to the deep dark oceans and even rivers.

Their diet is also vast.

Sharks will feed on something

as small as plankton

to prey as large as whales.

Their diversity has also

played a massive part.

Whilst many species of

shark had gone extinct,

such as the Stethacanthus

and the notorious megalodon,

many have evolved to survive,

requiring far less food in

order to sustain themselves,

unlike their giant ancestors.

Megalodon.

So 15 meters worth of fish

weighing up to 10

elephants worth, 50 tons,

and a mouth two meters wide.

I mean, it's a good job this

guy isn't around, it really is.

And teeth about 20 centimeters.

The white shark is kind

of like a mini megalodon.

Science thinks that white sharks

are descended from the same

sort of branch of ancestry.

But yeah, what a fish that was.

You can actually buy fossil teeth.

Probably big ones would be

about 20 meters, top to bottom.

Big fish, big teeth.

To be avoided.

I don't like to think of things extinct,

but I'm kind of glad

they're extinct actually.

The anatomy

of a shark naturally varies

depending on the biology

of their predecessors.

The hammerhead shark, for instance,

one of the youngest

families in our ocean today,

is estimated to have evolved

from a carcharhinid ancestor,

also known as a requiem shark.

The unusual shape of its head

is an amazing piece of anatomy,

built to maximize the fish's ability

to find its favorite meal, stingrays.

The great white shark, simply

known as a white shark,

has a remarkable anatomy.

Their species are classically

shaped with a pointed snout,

a triangular dorsal fin,

and a crescent-shaped caudal fin.

Each white shark is unique

and identifiable by the

color of their flanks,

ranging from very pale

undersides to a grayish black.

This also allows them to

view their prey from above,

disguising themselves with the pale sky.

The nostrils of the white shark

are on the underside of the snout

and lead to an organ

called the olfactory bulb.

The white shark is reported to possess

the largest olfactory

bulb of any shark species.

This is likely the cause

of many exaggerated rumors

regarding the great

white's sense of smell.

Whilst their scent is incredible,

sharks cannot smell a drop

of blood from a mile away

as many have proclaimed.

Scents travel to the great white

as they do to any living

being, through particles,

in this case carried by the ocean current.

The great white shark is

a temperate seas animal,

so it's really, really widespread.

It can take anything,

I believe from one

degree it's been clocked,

going down to one degree,

but normally five or six

degrees to about 25 degrees,

which means a vast band

of the world's oceans.

If you want to go and

see a great white shark,

then South Africa was a good place

until they went to w*r with orcas.

South Australia's a good place.

New Zealand's a good place.

California's a good place.

New England's a good place.

Anywhere in that sort of temperate band

of oceans around the world.

And I would say to

anybody, don't be worried.

You know, go and see a great white shark.

It's gonna be an experience

that's gonna blow you away.

I was working long time

ago on basking sharks

with an American photographer,

very famous one at the

time called Jeff Rotman.

And Jeff said, "Richard,

the first time you see a

white shark underwater,

it blows your away, it's indescribable."

About three years later I was in the water

in a cage in South Africa

and my first white shark swum up to me,

right, right, right up to the cage,

reasonable-sized animal,

probably about four meters.

And Jeff was right.

There aren't any words,

there's absolutely nothing

to describe what you feel

when that amazing creature

is just sort of, you know,

just coming up to say hello.

In those days, this is

a few years ago now,

we weren't just in cages.

I mean, you know, it was

a bit get the T-shirt,

get the tattoo, go outside the cage,

which was actually a

bit stupid and bonkers.

We all decided to go free diving anyway.

You're in a cage and this

thing comes up to you.

In a way, the thing that worried me most,

'cause I was leading a

team out there to do that,

was the very fact that

it wasn't frightening.

It was kind of spellbinding.

It was extraordinary.

It was an amazing experience

and you almost wanted to reach

out, and some people did.

And as the shark went by,

you almost wanted to stroke it.

Now, that may sound absolutely bonkers,

but it's true and people were.

And I could see from up on the deck

the guys looking down,

and one guy had his breather

taken out of his mouth

because he had done that

and they wanted him up there

to tell him off pretty quickly,

'cause that is bonkers.

You know, start sticking

bits of your body outside,

you're asking for trouble.

But you've got this incredible animal,

you're inches away if you're lucky,

and there's no feeling of aggression.

There really is no feeling of threat.

There's just a feeling of total awe.

The great white shark

is this sort of extraordinary

fighter aircraft

swimming through the water at you,

and the technical word

is it's spindle-shaped.

It's actually a solid tube of muscle,

held together, if you

like, by the cartilage.

It's called cartilaginous,

and that helps it with its speed.

It makes it lighter.

So it's not a bony structure,

helps it keep afloat.

On the shark's snout

you will find electro-receptors

known as ampullae of Lorenzini.

Many consider this to be the source

of a shark's sixth sense.

By sensing electric fields

emitted by animals in

the surrounding water,

the shark can hone in on its prey.

The great white can travel

up to 56 kilometers per hour.

This speed is assisted by

their torpedo-like body

and endothermic nature.

Another amazing fact

about the white shark

is that it's warm-blooded.

We think of these animals

as being cold-blooded,

but a great white shark

is quickly into action

because it doesn't have

to warm its muscles up.

So you've got this lovely

great big triangular dorsal fin

and then you've got

the engine at the back,

which is the tail fin doing that

and that's sort of driving it forward,

and then the two wings at the side.

And when you see a shark

moving through the water,

you're looking at something

of incredible beauty and grace and power

and incredible evolution,

because it didn't get that by accident.

Fish which

have the capability

of warming their muscles,

such as tuna and the shortfin mako shark,

are often faster and can

sustain a high swim speed

in order to migrate great distances.

Cetaceans,

the dolphins, the whales,

all that whole group of animals,

they're relatively easy

for science to record

in terms of numbers and things like that

because they've got to pop up for air.

Unfortunately, sharks,

and one of the reasons they

got in such terrible trouble

is it's a bit sort of out

of sight, out of mind.

Sharks don't pop up for air.

And so because they're not air-breathing,

they're much, much more difficult

to know how many there are.

A shark's respiratory system

works much like many other

of their marine relatives.

As a shark swims,

water passes through their mouth

and is pushed through their gills.

The gills filter the

oxygen out of the water

and into the shark's bloodstream.

Great whites do do a curious thing.

Great whites do a thing called spyhopping,

which is normally seen in whales

and that's the poking the

head up to have a look around.

And as far as I know,

it's the only shark species that does it.

I've been on shark boats many times

when I worked in South

Africa as a volunteer

and you'll suddenly see an animal,

I call the great whites animals,

you'll suddenly see the

shark pop up beside the boat

and have a look around.

Whether or not it's

responding to the stimulus

of the chum in the water I don't know.

I certainly think that's

making it more curious.

But they are the only

shark species that spyhop,

which is normally what whales do.

When hunting, you really see

the great white's sort of

physique coming to its own

in terms of the speeds achievable.

So you imagine a surfer, or not a surfer,

a seal on the surface of the water.

So the shark's down there.

Now, great white sharks are capable

of breaching completely.

That means the whole body

length out of the water.

So you've got this animal down

there and it's swimming along

and it sees something up there.

And to get its whole

body out of the water,

it's gonna have to achieve a

speed of over 30 miles an hour.

So it's gonna charge up

to the surface, whack,

and come outta the water

at over 30 miles an hour.

The normal sort of cruising

speed is very, very slow.

You'll see them just

literally cruising along

at one, two miles an hour, I would guess.

A sort of normal perhaps hunting speed,

well, maybe about 20 miles an hour

when it's actually going for something.

But when it's breaching

or when it's charging at

something from underneath,

that's what's been recorded,

over 30 miles an hour.

And when you consider the

size of a great white,

this is an animal that gets up

to over five meters in length,

recorded up to six meters in length,

to get that body out of the water,

that's a lot of power.

From Latin,

the great white's name is

translated to ragged tooth,

a fitting name given

that this shark's teeth

has always been a significant trait.

So behind that tooth is

another tooth and another tooth,

and it's like a production line.

And a white shark has probably got

I think about 300 teeth in its mouth

in operation at any one time.

50,000, I believe, teeth

likely in a lifetime.

Now, of course, that depends

how long a lifetime is,

but I guess that when they

arrive at a figure like that

they're probably talking

about an average animal,

maybe 40, 45 years or something like that.

One of the reasons there are so many

great white shark teeth

found on the seabed

and there are so many fossils

is because they're shedding

them the whole time,

and that actually does apply

to most predatory shark species.

When a shark's going for its prey,

so you've got the upper jaw if you like

and then a lower jaw sitting

at that sort of thing.

So that doesn't really work, does it,

in terms of closing your mouth.

So what's got to happen is the

lower jaw dislocates slightly

and comes into line and then it works.

So they can do that,

they can kind of unhinge

their jaw as they're going in

to attack their prey species

By eating fish,

they play a vital role in

benefiting marine ecosystems,

creating balance in the food chain.

One of the reasons that sharks are,

great white sharks in

particular, I suppose,

interact so unfortunately with

humans as often as they do,

which isn't really very often,

is because they often mistake humans

for what they really want to eat.

And what they really

want to eat are seals.

That would be the number

one item on the menu.

And that's why you find

white sharks in South Africa

where there are seal colonies,

in California where

there are seal colonies,

in Australia where

there are seal colonies.

One of the fascinating

facts for Britain actually

is that we've got a pretty

massive seal population

going up the west side of Britain

and particularly right off

the northwest of Scotland.

Huge seal population,

but we don't seem to

have any white sharks.

But seals would be number one menu item.

And then anything, you know,

smaller fish, smaller sharks.

One of the things that's

happening to white sharks

is that their prey list is going down

because it's being

overfished the whole time.

So the smaller shark species are not there

in the abundance they once were.

If a shark is going to mistake

a human on a surfboard for a seal,

then, you know, it knows very quickly

that it's made a mistake.

So you've got this animal

rushing up from underneath and bam,

'cause it's got no hands

or feet to feel you with,

so it got to use its mouth.

So it uses its mouth, it

makes an exploratory bite.

Now, if it's a great white shark,

an exploratory bite is likely

to be quite a horrific affair.

But nevertheless, as soon as it realizes

that it's got a mouthful of yuck,

you know, it's got sinew and

bone and surfboard and wetsuit.

That's not attractive

when it thought it was

getting a lovely juicy seal.

So, exploratory bite, lets you go,

and then hopefully you

get treated very quickly

and you survive.

Without hands

and with the possibility

of their vision being

blocked by ocean sediment,

a shark uses its next

best thing in its arsenal

to investigate potential food sources:

its mouth.

Many misinterpret a shark

bite to be malicious.

Rather, the shark is trying to understand

what is present in the surrounding area.

Some sharks may be docile,

having little to no interest

in its surroundings.

Some, however, are more

active and unpredictable,

a natural mood for a hungry fish.

Great whites are probably separated

from all the other sharks

by their reputation,

and that's kind of unfair, really.

Because we've got say 15

to 20 dangerous sharks

out of 500 and something.

When I say dangerous, these are sharks

that have been recorded

having interactions with man

classified as attacks.

So the white shark is top of the tree,

but I'm not sure that's fair

because it's highly

likely that the bull shark

may be responsible for more

attacks than the white shark.

An awful lot of this happens

because in some water situations,

in estuaries for example,

the bull shark can take

freshwater and saltwater,

so the bull shark can go up estuaries.

Now, in relatively primitive places,

particularly in the third world,

if they're washing,

swimming, bathing, et cetera

in muddy water and estuaries

and a bull shark comes and takes them,

you don't stop and identify the shark.

You know you just get

bitten and then worry.

So an awful lot of attacks

I suspect that may have been attributed

to white sharks in the past

were actually likely to be bull sharks.

One of the things I hate

answering when I'm lecturing,

especially young children,

is what's the difference between

a male and a female shark.

And I know the children when

they're asking this question

when they already know the answer

when they ask the question.

Because what they're asking about

is why do male sharks have two willies?

And that can be really embarrassing

if you are the person giving the lecture

and you've got 200 children out there

having been primed this question.

But males reproduce, and

they're called claspers.

So males have two claspers.

They get calcified.

I don't quite know why they have two,

I don't think the science

actually knows that yet.

So from a reproduction point of view,

it's a very mammalian almost situation.

You have a clasper

inserted into the female.

When reproduction's going on,

the male will grab the female.

It's pretty brutal sometimes,

because if you think about it,

they can't hold, they can't embrace.

I mean, it's a mouth that grabs a female.

I've seen blue sharks with

horrific scarring down their back

where a male's grabbed a female

and then sort of twisted around her

and so on and so forth.

It is an uncomfortable fact

that our oceans are now faced

with three huge threats:

overfishing, pollution,

and climate change,

and nature is facing a breaking point.

Thanks to the food and oxygen it provides,

the seas are integral to

the survival of humanity,

but it must be maintained.

Humans have mismanaged the waters,

pollution has increased,

and by 2050 it is estimated

there will be more plastic

in the ocean than fish.

It would be difficult to overstate

the degree to which the

oceans are in trouble.

And if we look at sharks,

they are apex predators,

so they're the top of the food chain,

and when you remove a link in

a chain, the chain collapses.

So sharks play a hugely important part

in keeping our oceans healthy.

And if we want to continue to exist

on this planet as humans,

we need healthy oceans for our

continued healthy existence.

It's not the only answer,

but we need sharks in those

oceans to keep them healthy.

For years and years

and years now, decades,

sharks have been overfished,

over-persecuted, over-harvested,

often way past a point that

their populations can sustain.

And because sharks reproduce so slowly,

they haven't been able to keep up

with the pressure that's

being put on them.

One good thing that has started

to happen in recent years

I think is that the

publics all over the world

have started to appreciate sharks

not just as sort of

dread machines of attack,

but as the beautiful creatures they are.

There's been a lot of

pressure on governments

here in Europe and in the United States

to put legislation in place

to protect shark populations

and protect the oceans in general.

So I'm hopeful as we go forward now

that sharks do have a future.

If you'd asked me that

question 15, 20 years ago,

I'd have been a lot less sure.

But we've now got a policy

in Europe, for example,

called FNA, fins naturally attached.

Sharks may be landed,

unless they're a protected species.

They may be landed

and the fin must be attached to the shark.

So there's no more slicing

off of fins at sea,

dumping the body, and just

taking all the fins in.

And that used to happen

because the fins were the valuable bit.

Very similar to taking a domestic animal,

let's say a dog or a cat,

chopping its feet off and

leaving it on the pavement.

All that is now being stopped.

Hasn't totally been stopped,

but it is being stopped.

So we've grown up, we've

done all that, that's good.

In China, which used to consume 90%,

no, I believe 95% of the world shark fins,

China is now consuming a lot less.

The Chinese government

has stopped shark fin soup

being served at official

banquets and things like that.

Young people in China, due

to the power of the internet,

they don't want their parents

to buy them shark fin

soup at their weddings.

So there is hope, there have to be hope.

Disrupting

the flow of the ecosystem

disrupts the planet's progress.

The ocean waters would become warmer,

more acidic, and hold less oxygen.

The sea levels would change,

altering the landscape of

coastlines around the globe.

Eventually any creature

which would be left

would not be of use to

us, such as jellyfish,

which would become far more

prominent in the waters.

Many of the problems

which threaten the longevity of the ocean

are far bigger than the

choices of an individual.

There must be large-scale

collective change

in the way the seas and

habitats are maintained.

Such devotion requires the involvement

of governments and businesses.

For me, one of the big

challenges is dispelling the myth.

So here we've got this group of animals

which really are suffering

from an undeserved reputation.

Very few shark attacks

and yet they've got this

dreadful label on them.

And I can't get rid of it,

and all the campaigners like

me, we can't get rid of it.

So why?

It's really interesting to speculate why.

If you go back into ancient

Roman and Greek mythology

and you see naval battles depicted at sea,

you'll see guys being shot off ships

with bows and arrows and

spears and stuff like that

and very often you'll see

sharks depicted in the water

waiting for them to fall overboard.

So right back in Greek and Roman times,

these animals were being

demonized in this way.

I often wonder whether Jonah and the whale

shouldn't actually be

Jonah and the white shark,

the great white shark,

'cause very few whales

will take a human in.

Very few whales have actually

got the structure to do that,

but a six-meter great white

shark certainly could do that.

Perhaps one of the most famous incidents

was a ship called the SS Indianapolis.

And the Indianapolis was an American ship

which went to an island off Japan

at the end of the Second World w*r,

and they delivered the atomic bombs

that were then put on airplanes

and taken and dropped on Japan.

And the Indianapolis,

having delivered the bombs, got torpedoed.

13, 1,400 men went into the water,

and they stayed in the water

for three or four days or something

before survivors were picked up,

and only 3 or 400, something

like that, came out.

The rest either died of exposure

or injuries or something

or were taken by sharks,

and that was famously

described in the film "Jaws."

But the SS Indianapolis incident

cemented the great white shark

as a sort of hate figure,

fear figure at the end

of the Second World w*r

and it was very, very widely publicized.

"Jaws," of course, didn't really help.

But I think the main thing is

that we've got this deep-seated

fear of the unknown.

So why are we more frightened of sharks,

for example, than lions?

It's completely illogical.

You've got probably far

more chance with a shark

than with a lion.

I'll tell you why,

it's because it hits the fear buttons,

the fear of the unknown, the

fear of being eaten alive,

the fear of being out of your own element.

And if you think about the film "Jaws"

and that incredible opening scene,

which is so clever

with the girl swimming and being attacked,

all three human fear buttons are hit.

So it's the unknown.

The camera comes up through the water

and the shark takes the girl.

So she's being attacked

by this hidden monster from

the unknown, from underneath.

She's then going to be eaten.

So that's the second fear button.

And of course, she's

in the shark's element,

not her own element.

She's in the water.

So I don't if Benchley

knew what he was doing

when he wrote that

or whether Spielberg

knew what he was doing

when he constructed the scene,

but he hit all three human fear buttons,

and humans from that point in the theater

were absolutely captivated by that.

And that, in general

terms, is it, I think.

It hits the fear buttons.

And the other thing is we must remember

we love our monsters.

Go to any fairground you'd like

in Britain or the United

States or anywhere

and we've got the house of

horrors, the wall of death,

the this, the that, the other.

Do you ever see a house of lovely things?

Do you ever see wall of survival?

No, no, no, it's gotta be horror,

it's gotta be this, that, and the other.

The shark hits all those buttons as well.

So the poor old shark, really,

I can struggle as hard as I can,

and we all try and do, the people like me,

but it's got an awfully

big uphill struggle

'cause it's got to get rid of history

and get rid of sort of really primal fear.

Sharks are not

the bloodthirsty predators

we have been led to

believe for so many years.

They are an intelligent, curious species.

While shark attacks average

around 70 per year over

the past two decades,

it is important to note

that very few of these attacks are fatal.

In 2022, there were 11

deaths caused by fireworks

compared to only five by shark attacks.

Other animals such as

mosquitoes, dogs, and even cows

are more dangerous to humans.

If you live in a country

where there are lots of cows,

and this is a slightly unfair statistic

'cause, you know, if you

live in a rural situation,

you're not gonna be

gonna the ocean anyway,

but there will be more deaths

as a result of accidents

with cows than with sharks.

I feel very sorry for sharks,

'cause they've got so

much more to fear from us

than we have from them.

I wanna put the whole shark attack thing

in a little bit of context.

We've got over 500 species of sharks

and we're still discovering more.

Less than 20 have been

recorded attacking man.

So it's a tiny proportion.

So out of the tiny

proportion that attack man,

if you're being approached

by a shark in the water,

there are some things you do,

but there are basically things

I would say more that you don't do.

Women would be stupid to go in the water

if they were menstruating.

You don't pee in the water.

Urine's just as exciting,

gives up just as much of a smell

as blood or something else.

So you avoid all that.

Avoid shiny, flashy, silver objects,

'cause these sorts of things

can not only attract

the shark's attention,

but might look like a fish.

If you're a surfer, don't go surfing

where you know there are

white sharks on patrol

because there is a possibility

you'll be mistaken for a seal.

So it's kind of common sense, really.

Make yourself as large as possible,

and that's true of any predator.

Most predators are ambush

or chase predators,

and a shark is no different.

On the occasions where I've

felt slightly threatened,

I've always made myself

as big as possible,

spread arms, spread legs,

big camera in my hand

sometimes, et cetera,

to make myself a bigger animal than I am.

A way of avoiding an attack by something

that really maybe thought you were

a threat to a food source, for example,

would be to do exactly the opposite.

I'm no threat.

So do that.

There are various techniques

and you learn them, basically.

Most divers should actually

learn about this sort of thing,

and surfers certainly should

learn about this sort of thing.

The vast majority

of shark attack victims survive.

Most fatalities result from blood loss,

indicating that sharks do

not persist in attacking.

They usually bite once and

then realize their mistake,

as they have no interest in eating humans.

Perhaps the most

famous great white shark

is an animal called Nicole,

named after Nicole Kidman,

who had a real sort of passion

for great white sharks.

And Nicole was tagged off South

Africa with a satellite tag,

and a satellite tag then transmits data

up to a satellite and

eventually the data comes down

and you can see where the animal's gone.

And satellite tags were set to pop off

after a certain period of time.

So Nicole was tagged in South Africa

and then the tag popped off an ocean away

in western Australia 90-odd days later.

So she had made a whole-ocean crossing.

And the most amazing things about this

were that she knew where she was going.

The satellite track showed

she had more or less

gone in a straight line.

Now, any of us humans,

we need a GPS, we need a compass,

we need this, we need

that, we need the other.

We haven't got a clue!

We can't even go from

sort of London in England

to Scotland without help.

A great white shark can do a whole ocean

and it's all in there somehow.

And how did she do it?

Well, we don't know is the answer,

but she's got this electro-sensory

array in her snout,

so she may well have picked up

electromagnetic clues

from the Earth's core,

'cause she did dive down to deep distances

as well as staying near the

surface most of the time.

Maybe she was using stellar clues,

in other words, navigating by the stars.

'cause they do spyhop.

She was within 20 feet of the surface

an awful lot of the time.

But with pretty much pinpoint accuracy,

she knew where she was going.

And then the most amazing thing is

she turned around and came back.

And then later the following year,

she turned up literally a

couple of hundred meters

away from where she'd been

tagged in South Africa.

To stop demonizing

these beautiful creatures,

we must first recognize that

the sea has been their home

for hundreds of millions

of years, not ours.

Future generations should be taught

that sharks are not monsters.

They are much like us,

striving to survive in an

unforgiving environment.

It is our responsibility to ensure

that these magnificent lifeforms

continue to thrive for many years to come.

One of the great things

I would say is, you know,

do regard your natural

world as worth preserving,

'cause if you don't, the

planet won't preserve you.

And do regard sharks as

something of incredible beauty

and something to be

admired and sought after.

Go and try and see 'em.

If you don't wanna get in

the water with 'em, don't.

Stay on the boat and

look down into the water.

But enjoy nature and enjoy your sharks.

And let's, everything on the planet,

let's try and live together.

Let's try and have a future, all of us.