Jaws in life… This is the experience lived by the team of a Netflix documentary who saw their boat being attacked twice by sharks in Hawaii!
It seems that Netflix has made its own remake of Jaws, but without meaning to. A documentary film crew in Hawaii recently faced two tiger shark attacks, resulting in “the explosion” from a boat and an emergency landing.
The crew were filming for the Netflix documentary series Our Planet, whose narrator is famed British biologist Sir David Attenborough. Huw Cordey, one of the producers of the series, explained to Forbes that at one point the team was following a Laysan albatross chick to Hawaii to see how the “longest living birds“travel around the planet.
They wanted to shoot underwater around the Hawaiian island of Laysan where they could film tiger sharks waiting in the shallows for albatross chicks to spend the first months of their lives learning to fly.
“The first day the tiger sharks were there, the crew got into these inflatable boats and two sharks attacked them“, says Huw Cordey.”It felt like Jaws. The crew panicked and made an emergency landing on the sand.“
Toby Nowlan, producer and director of the first and third episodes of the series, also spoke about this ordeal. He told to RadioTimes that when the team was in the dinghies, a “v” formed in the water”suddenly came straight at us“.
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“This tiger shark threw itself on the boat and pierced it with huge holes“, he said. “The whole boat exploded. We tried to push him away, but he didn’t want to know. It was horrible. It was the second shark attacking us that day.“.
According to Toby Nowlan, the crew was only about 328 feet (100 meters) from shore, which allowed them to reach dry land safely, albeit with some scares.
Ashore, they repaired the boat and deployed a dinghy, but it was attacked by bighead trevallies, fish that can measure up to 1.80m in length and weigh more than 45kg. The dinghy’s engine failed under the effect of this attack.
The behavior of these sharks was “extremely unusual“, according to Nowlan.”They were incredibly hungry so there may not have been enough food in their natural environment and they would try anything they found in the water“, he told Radio Times.
Rare attacks
Season 2 of Our Planet was released on June 14 on Netflix and contains four episodes of approximately 50 minutes each. Each chapter follows animal populations that continue to make their way through an ever-changing planet, including humpback whales, polar bears, bees, sea turtles, and gray whales.
Despite the circumstances”horrible“From the crew’s experience with tiger sharks in Hawaii, shark attacks remain rare. Kayleigh Grant, founder of Kaimana Ocean Safari in Hawaii, told CBS News that people “shouldn’t be afraid of sharks“.
“The sharks mean us no harm. They are not like in the movie Jaws“, she said, adding that these animals are “really misunderstood“.”They are not the enemy. We should work with them to keep the ecosystem healthy and balanced.”
Wildlife conservation specialist Jeff Corwin also told CBS News that sharks were indicators of healthy ecosystems and that although unwanted encounters with them make the headlines, they are usually present all around people without people realizing it. (This is something to reassure vacationers who plan to go to the seaside this summer!)
“The truth is, when you’re in the water, in a healthy marine ecosystem, you’re never more than 100 meters from a shark.“said Mr. Corwin.”In places around the world where we observe a collapse of marine environments, the first thing we see is often the disappearance of the apex predator, the shark.
They have been present on our planet for 100 million years. When we lose our sharks, it means something is wrong“.