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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,

illegal 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 kill 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 kill,

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 killed.

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 killer 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 killed.

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 kill 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 killed 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 war 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 War,

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 War

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.