Original subtitles

So I want to say, at first, I had to learn to survive,

to be able to even stay in the water with them.

Um, and where most people, if they were charged by a shark,

they would have, like, gotten the fuck out of the water…

Clip this on the back.

…because I stayed in the water after being rushed by a shark, right?

I was able to actually observe natural behavior,

and that's when I started to learn

shark language.

Everybody knows who Ocean Ramsey is.

Ocean Ramsey.

Ocean Ramsey.

Fearless. Daredevil.

She's on the news. It's going around the world.

-Her name's Ocean? -Her name is Ocean.

But nobody knows about her story.

I wanna explore.

I wanna push the limits.

It's like I'm made to do this.

The emotions and the connection that I feel,

it's overwhelming.

This is what I'm alive for.

I'm not a crazy person.

I'm hyperaware of what they're capable of.

It's just that sharks are the calling that I have.

This is breaking barriers. Something could go wrong.

Believed to be the largest great white shark on record

anywhere in the world.

She gets in the water and asks the question,

"Why should I be afraid?"

♪ I'd like to be ♪

♪ I'd like to be ♪

♪ With you ♪

♪ My little chickadee ♪

♪ Just with you ♪

♪ 'Neath the skies of blue ♪

♪ Holding hands ♪

Growing up in Hawaii

really shaped me as a person.

Just looking out at the ocean and the different colors

and feeling the power in the waves.

I was actually kind of a shy kid growing up.

Very quiet. Very quiet.

I was definitely much more drawn

to just interacting with animals out in nature

rather than socializing with other humans, truthfully.

I was like a little wild child.

Being out in nature…

Makes me feel connected to something higher

and greater than myself.

The first time that I saw a shark with my own eyes,

I think I was maybe seven or eight years old.

And it centers right below me.

And so at that moment, I have that choice.

Do I follow it,

or is this supposed to be something that I'm afraid of?

I swam after it for a little bit.

That's such a cool experience to have and to have that natural fascination.

And that fascination has never left me.

When I'm around them, I feel most alive.

And it's not an adrenaline rush. It's a feeling of connection,

where I feel the most myself.

There's something so magnetic for me about sharks.

And I feel like that's because that's what my life was meant for.

It's my point and purpose.

Photography was a passion I developed through surfing.

In the early stages of my life,

I kind of thought that I would become a surf photographer.

Sadly, along the way,

I realized that if I wanted to make it as a surf photographer,

I would have to give up the best days of surfing

in order to make money photographing it, right?

So I was like, "Ooh!" I didn't really anticipate that.

But, as a surfer growing up in Hawaii, I was petrified of sharks, right?

I think I was like seven, eight.

And there was a lot of shark attacks.

Coming up, we'll tell you about O'ahu's latest attack.

Shark came up from underneath it.

The shark hit him twice, got his arm.

You don't really feel that comfortable out surfing.

That fear spread through the whole community

and through my whole childhood.

Under pressure from a nervous tourist industry,

the state of Hawaii launched a shark task force

to deal with the attacks.

The controversial decision was made to start killing sharks.

And I was like, "The only good shark is a dead shark."

I was down there, Hale'iwa Harbor.

They had the tiger sharks sprawled out on the launch ramps.

Like 20 or 30, and cheering the fishermen on.

I was just a scared little kid.

Didn't really know any better.

It's sad that that was my background

up until I actually got to go dive with one,

and it was the opposite of what I thought it would be.

A buddy of mine, we kind of started doing dive charters…

And trying to teach people more about sharks.

We kind of helped start the whole cage tourism industry out here,

which was a really hard thing to do back in the day,

because there was still so much fear here in the community.

Friends that wouldn't even talk to me now because I like sharks.

They're like, "You're bringing the monsters to our hometown."

I'm like, "They're not monsters. And they were here before us."

"We need to learn how to coexist", right?

So that… that was what, you know, really kind of, um,

really kind of set the stage for me meeting Ocean.

2006 is when I first met her.

She was teaching scuba.

I was a captain on a shark boat.

The first day, I remember she was like, "If you want to get certified under me,

you have to come with me and you have to see sharks in the wild."

"'Cause I want you to know how sharks really are."

And, um, I was instantly like, "Oh my God, she's amazing." Right?

So at the time when we met,

I was getting out of a two-year relationship,

and I really wanted to be single.

I was like, "Oh, she's not into me. She's being super quiet."

"She doesn't wanna talk to me. She's not into me."

I just… I need to focus on the sharks.

Sharks are the calling that I have.

Here in Hawaii, we have over 30 different species of shark.

Most of them will swim away.

But tiger sharks, they definitely feel different.

They're darker on the top with these beautiful stripes.

And they're gonna max out usually around 18 feet in length.

They're so curious and cognitive and aware.

They can essentially eat almost anything.

They can bite through turtle shell and bone.

The body of a 60-year-old woman…

She didn't see the shark coming.

And they're capable of short bursts of incredible speed.

Tiger shark!

People are so afraid of them.

And that fear comes from a lack of understanding.

Sharks have been around at least 400 million years.

Sylvia is one of the ocean's greatest defenders.

This dedication has made her a kind of underwater royalty,

nicknamed Her Deepness.

Sure we can't do this underwater?

They're a critical part of what makes the ocean function.

My name is Kim Holland.

I'm a research professor at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology,

and I founded the shark research group here 40 years ago.

Sharks have evolved in this top predator role.

If you take out the sharks,

then you've put a ripple effect down through the rest of the food chain.

We need the ocean. We need a healthy living ocean.

We need all the pieces to be working

as they have worked long before there even were humans.

If we disturb that ecosystem,

even if we don't know exactly what our impacts are, it can't be good.

One of the worst enemies of sharks is ignorance.

Because people, they have that part of the story.

We don't have the counterbalance.

We have no understanding of what their life is like.

We have no understanding of the struggles that they have to go through

in their daily life.

That would change the story.

With Juan, what really caught my attention

was how he was talking about sharks.

I could hear the passion that he had for them.

And up until that point,

I had never met another person

that was saying those things.

It caught my heart.

Yeah, I'm ready.

And then we were just going diving together every single day.

She's like this beautiful wild animal…

That's trying to live life as a human.

Just gotta try and keep up.

It was cool with Juan.

It was like, "We could do this all day, every day."

And he was, like, as obsessed as I was, I think.

Back then, she was like, "I wanna see sharks."

All the time.

That became like an obsession almost.

But here in Hawaii,

tiger sharks are the one that humans are most concerned with,

given how powerful that they are, how quickly they could take life.

I don't think people realize

how much time was put into identifying the areas

where we can guarantee to see them.

Literally thousands of drift dives…

From season to season to season,

marking on the GPS every time we would see a shark…

And what species,

how many.

After finding progressively more and more sharks…

Eventually, we found pretty much the damn near perfect site.

The strong convergent currents are

probably the biggest driver of why the sharks are there.

The current is converging at that specific point

because of the bottom contour of the ocean,

as well as the contour of the land.

People thought that you needed a cage because sharks were dangerous.

But the changemakers are the ones that try something a little different, right?

I wanna prove to the world that they're not monsters.

That is what I wanna prove.

I'll be honest,

I had nerves. I wasn't, like, you know, expressing them,

even though I was a little uncomfortable at times, for sure.

But Ocean is definitely, you know, alpha position in our relationship.

And I have no problem with that.

She had the lead on it, right?

I'm just gonna film.

They've got thicker skin, sharper teeth and they can out swim me.

How do I not get caught off guard?

Everything goes so fast.

I'm literally, at that moment, in front of a shark's mouth.

And in my mind, it's just like, "You gotta survive."

I'm like, "Okay, let's push down."

Even though it looked out of control to me,

she always had this control over the situation.

I found that the longer I stayed down there,

the more that they would treat me sort of like another shark.

But every couple of minutes, I'd pop up to breathe.

I decided to increase my breath hold

in order to spend more time with them.

Free diving, if you're spending time with sharks,

it's so much better,

because you're much more like another marine animal

and more agile.

I've always had a natural edge for free diving.

But I wanted to better myself.

When the urges to breathe come,

and your initial thought is, "Oh my gosh, I have to breathe,"

you can train out of that by just being like,

"No. I realize, actually, like, my body can go longer."

And it literally changed the way that my brain interprets pain.

I was constantly pushing myself.

And it was the sharks that drove me to do that.

Now I can hold my breath for over six and a half minutes.

I would then get to watch them interacting with one another,

and that was when I got to see their language and their communication.

There was something that I read when I was younger.

Somebody had studied bees in a beehive

and realized that they do a little dance to communicate to one another.

I think that was what branched out in my mind.

Sharks don't just swim at random.

There's actually a lot of patterns.

It was the patterns of social hierarchy.

Following or piggybacking.

Interception or blocking.

One of the most obvious ones to me was parallel swimming.

Two sharks line up side by side,

sizing each other up.

And it's generally the larger shark that's gonna take that higher position.

Or occasionally, I would see them actually turn over

at that individual that's sizing up with them.

Like, "Hey, don't do that."

Dropping its pectoral fins down.

This is a little bit of a threat display.

I realized that if I'm tense or nervous or stressed,

whatever those emotions are, they are reflected in your body,

in small muscle movements.

The sharks are so highly evolved that they pick up on it.

It feels like they're reading your mind.

If you can make your intentions very clear in your mind,

your muscles in your body will sort of reflect that.

And it makes you look at the world like a shark.

Opening this door, it really opened my eyes.

It wasn't until a little while later

I became more accustomed to recognizing certain individuals.

I didn't even realize like, you know, "It's Nikki," yet.

You know, we're not on a "first-name basis" yet,

but I recognize her.

I remember some of the scars that she had.

Like, "Do you remember me?"

"Is that you?"

Kind of like waving at a friend, like, "Hey."

Sharks have a nictitating membrane, which is actually their eyelid.

And it folds up instead of down.

They use it for protection.

I love seeing them fight it.

And, like, as they get close, they wanna keep it open.

And they wanna look.

Nikki would come up and then open her eyes

and look at me.

"Yeah, I see you." You know what I mean?

When the eye is lifted, it just shows the level of trust.

What if I just put my hand out?

And I'm just gonna adapt to whatever she's giving me.

And then Nikki responds to that.

There's something going on here that I can't explain.

Like, they are communicating.

In that moment of contact, there is so much said.

Sharks have this sensory system

where they can feel the electrical output from living organisms.

So she's literally feeling who I am

on a level that we don't sense the world.

Not everything can be quantified.

It doesn't mean that it's not happening.

So at that point, I remember I was getting really good images

and, you know, trying to get out there

and get the message across.

But still, the conversation was, "Monster, monster."

But we just gotta change the music, change the way we look at sharks.

Flip the perception.

When I had Ocean in the photos,

it was, like, that key component where they're like,

"Why isn't she getting eaten?"

From that moment that I realized

that human component of interacting with sharks is the difference,

that people can connect with and really see sharks differently.

"Oh my gosh, maybe they're not like Jaws."

Since that moment, I've just filmed every interaction that I possibly can.

That was what I needed to do every single day.

Putting yourself out there…

…is also just putting yourself out there for criticism.

I'm very nervous about this whole Ocean Ramsey thing.

In Hawaiian practice,

you don't force yourself onto something else.

You allow something to come to you.

She's notorious for it.

Everyone in the shark industry knows who she is and what she does.

More for the Gram and more for the shot.

People see that, they wanna be part of it, it draws them in.

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it.

People don't listen to us anyway…

What are we even here for? To pick up the pieces.

To do this and put it out to masses and let people see that,

it sends the wrong message.

'Cause everybody thinks they can do it.

If a shark makes that connection with you, that's, I think, a different story.

I want to know you. I want to feel you. I want to understand.

Whatever reason you feel the need to have your hand on this animal,

you better understand what's going on and what you're getting yourself into.

You watch Ocean and Juan, they understand the shark.

You won't find many people like that.

Understand in their mind and their heart and being in sync.

Not only with the shark but in the ocean.

To see this young woman at peace with these big animals

causes us to see through her eyes, to see them differently.

I think that that's a very good way to change the human perceptions.

What they are trying to show is that we don't have to be afraid of the animals.

That's what they are really trying to make people understand.

She gets in the water and…

And asks the question, "Why should I be afraid?"

Most of the time, you're gonna get away with it,

but some of the time, you're not.

It's a weird line that we run that's like, how do you find that balance

between, you know, humanizing and showing their personality

and how incredible they are and that they're not monsters?

But then they're apex predators, not puppies.

And if it doesn't go well,

it's on us. We're offshore.

It's not like anyone needs to know.

We don't have kids.

We don't really have anything that we're risking except for our own lives.

I'm good to go anytime. Like, what is it?

It's not the years in your life. It's the life in your years.

And I'm... Phew, wow, Shark.

-Sharkey can clear the room! -You know how to clear a room.

He's like, "Oh yeah. Remember me? Remember."

I hope he doesn't start to pick up on this,

that if he starts to do that, I'll roll the window down.

Fashionably on Aloha Time.

Yeah, guys!

Sorry we're late!

Oh.

Yeah. You're so big, every time!

Look what I brought you. They're shark tattoos.

-Thank you! -Yeah!

So you can have a tattoo like your dad.

So I was thinking we could make these cute little shark bracelets.

Wait, how did the shark lose its teeth?

So, sharks are so lucky. They never have to go to the dentist.

I met Ocean and Juan,

and I had just done this little baby project with them.

We went on one dive, and I think I contacted them immediately.

And I was like, "Hey, I wanna do this again."

When you are swimming with a big shark,

there is an energy and there is a presence to it

that's really difficult to describe.

You just realize that you're swimming with something

that's been around in some form or another since before trees.

You're swimming with a dinosaur.

Ocean and Juan, they're perfectly conditioned and skilled

to do what they're doing.

They live it.

And I think it's much more dangerous

for a person who wouldn't be able to live it.

Phew, I would honestly say I'm still scared every time.

It's really important to be calm

and to be a competent predator in their presence.

There's kind of no room for weakness with them.

But as I encounter a shark, I don't know what their history is.

I don't know what their history is with humans.

That is going to be a factor into the way that they interact with me.

Oh gosh. There's like... Okay. So Kalihi, Kalihi, Kalihi…

Hi, Kalihi!

Kalihi means "the edge" in Hawaiian.

She came in as a juvenile, very powerful juvenile.

Watching her rush up to anything.

Bump. Bite.

Wow.

She's so much more intense than the others.

She's very smart.

Kalihi threw something that I hadn't seen before.

Coming up and like chomping on the surface…

To create bubbles.

So it'd be like blind on the surface.

She throws so many curve balls.

The way that she would try and, like, turn her body around,

it was almost like she had learned my methods.

I don't know how.

I knew that she knew what she was doing.

And I wasn't gonna second guess her.

I was never gonna give her any seed of doubt.

It's not a video game.

There's no pause.

She was challenging Ocean.

Accept the risks. Acknowledge them and move on.

All that time in the water, the sharks were teaching me.

They were shaping my movements in the water

the way that they shape other animals.

They would approach me from different angles.

They would show me that they like to use their countershading from below.

Those experiences helped me learn to redirect.

Pushing down.

Locking at the elbow.

It's almost like a beautiful dance.

If she wanted the sharks to come closer, she would put her head down,

tuck into a ball.

If you need more space, all you have to do is go vertical, posture up.

Be a little bit more direct with that eye contact.

So let them know, "Hey, I'm an equal predator, and I'm aware."

When you need to hold your ground, you hold your ground.

She's so aware, just, like, so knowledgeable about the animals.

For me, behind the camera, sometimes I get a little complacent.

When you're looking through a lens, it's sort of tunnel vision.

I have to look out for him.

She's taught me so much.

All the behaviors.

And then, this is how you do it strategically to make it safe.

Ocean's really made it more of a… kind of, more of a science.

If you're on a long board, you're less likely to get approached.

If you're swimming with someone, you're less likely to get approached.

Minimizing splashing, minimizing anything that can draw attention to yourself.

I'm just gonna take a pause…

Keeping humans separate from sharks isn't a reality.

There's gonna be a lot of people that wanna swim, surf, and dive,

and they're gonna encounter sharks.

I want people to be safe

because when an accident happens, that doesn't help my cause,

that doesn't help shark conservation,

that doesn't help the reputation of a shark.

And so I feel a very strong moral obligation

to make sure that people stay safe and that they are taught how to stay safe.

One of the things about shark attacks is that in almost all cases,

the person attacked, um, never knew that they were gonna be attacked.

So they never had the chance to take evasive action.

My perspective on what she does, it's more for show than it is for science.

If you are a scientist or you are not a scientist,

that doesn't matter that much. For me, what matters

is the amount of time that you spend with these animals.

I think she probably has a strong understanding of shark behavior

because of the time that she spent in the water with these animals.

But in the actual research community,

she doesn't have any respect.

It might seem to some that

because she allows herself to be photographed

and tell her stories,

that's not what a scientist does.

But what does a scientist do except observe carefully

and share the view?

We've been doing the field ID data sets for 15 years now.

And we've got 300 different sharks identified.

To me, they're as unique,

as individual,

as important as any human being.

Me and Ocean started working together in 2006.

It was about five years in when Roxy came into our lives.

The first time that we saw her,

her jaw was freshly broken and it looked horrible.

I don't know. For me, I could feel her pain.

I could just see it in the way she was swimming.

And I remember getting some footage of her.

Everyone's like, "Oh my God. It's a monster. It's disgustingly scary."

She's not the monster.

The monster is the people that did that to her.

Imagine having your jaw broken open.

And imagine what that would be like to try and eat.

Her best chances of feeding are really coming from

fish that's already been caught or is already dead,

which is usually found on a hook or in a net.

She has a lot working against her.

And then to have the SAT tag on top of that…

She gets entangled more than any other animal

because of that tag.

A lot of times, we remove fishing line and stuff from other sharks,

they just bolt off.

But with Roxy, after so many years of removing that,

I definitely know she recognizes us.

There's so much emotion around her with me personally.

In 1999, I broke my back in a rock climbing accident.

The line snapped, I fell like 50 feet.

You know, and someone tells you you're not gonna be able to walk again,

like, hoo, that's a game changer, right?

Is it even worth going anymore?

I spend so much time with Juan,

and I see how much pain he's in, like, with his back, constantly.

And I feel that those two get each other and connect on a different level

because they're both constantly struggling with pain.

It's just beautiful to get to see them interact together.

We're supposed to keep the elbow locked, but…

I feel so relaxed at times, and I'll just let it bend.

It's just baffling to me the way that animals can be treated.

It was really that moment in time where you realize

they really don't have protection.

Like, there were no legal repercussions for just killing a shark here.

Nearly 100 baby hammerhead sharks found dead in Hawaii.

These pups likely died after being caught in a fisherman's gill net.

They're not protected from the wasteful killing.

Things like shark fishing.

Killing a shark, like Roxy, right?

Breaking their jaw out, dragging them out of the water

just to take a picture with them.

I feel…

I'm not really that great about, like, putting…

Putting words to, like, emotions.

Of course, you feel heartbroken about that. It's suffering.

At this point,

shark populations were down to fewer than 10% for most large species.

All of them are headed towards the brink of extinction.

Okay, so where are we?

Here.

And where are we going to…

Fish market.

And then when I realized shark finning was going on…

And that shark populations were being decimated around the planet

for this wasteful bowl of soup, it lit a fire in me.

Shark…

Countries all around the world are killing them,

and it happens out of sight and out of mind.

-Do you know what kind of shark? -Huh?

Is this the whale shark?

Even if they weren't a keystone species, super important for marine ecosystems,

even if they weren't,

just to kill an animal for less than 2% of its body…

Why would anyone do that just for a bowl of soup?

Where is the biggest problem?

The biggest problem I saw straight in front of me was

sharks being exterminated. Okay, that's the problem.

So how do you get that information out? It's through visual imagery.

I'll use my appearance.

I'll put myself out there for a cause.

People look first and listen second.

Catching people's attention.

And then being able to get that good message through…

Is something that I definitely aim for.

This is small-scale. This is every single day.

With those images, you could actually reach

so many more people

than any of the other things that we've done.

It's an opportunity to reach the entire public.

As a female, I'll get a different level of attention for it

and I'll get a higher level of criticism.

Not everyone's gonna agree with you.

Keyboard warriors, millions of miles away.

People are like, "You're gonna die."

I'm like, "I hope you have a wonderful day and a long life too."

People want to comment on my appearance or my approach to conservation.

I challenge them to do better.

So it is what it is.

Just gotta work with it, right?

Ultimately, we knew we had to do something more extreme to cut through the bullshit.

Jaws.

The deepest fear that everybody has of sharks.

It's always the image of a great white.

And so we wanted to go to get this picture

to try and show connection between human and great white shark,

the "anti-Jaws."

And in Hawaii, we do get them coming through every year,

but it's so rare to see them.

Like the unicorn of the ocean.

Rare to ever see,

let alone actually be in the water and have one swim up to you.

There's only a few places in the world where we know we can find great whites

and that you can dive with great whites, and, um, one place is Guadalupe.

My first time diving with great whites.

The chum and the fish is all going down current that direction.

And the shark should come from that direction.

And he comes from the bow of the boat.

Eyes open, making eye contact with each person.

And then he dives down.

And then the next thing he's coming straight up from the bottom so fast.

And it's just like a blur of white. Boom!

What it made me realize is that if they wanted humans,

we'd never have a chance.

People wouldn't be, like, bitten by sharks.

They'd be disappearing.

So, really, for the first time in my life,

I decided to go and start observing

the behavior of a specific species of shark

from within a cage.

Just watching the way the sharks interact with each other,

watching their conversations,

and getting to know the language.

There's a certain level of nervousness, but it's more excitement.

And it's that feeling of like, "Okay, I'm ready for this now."

Learning, observing, noticing when I was, like, getting locked in here,

and, oop, there's one right here on the side. I missed that one.

Now, do I know 100% what's gonna happen when I'm outside this cage?

No.

And then I saw this beautiful shark.

The most dominant female in the area.

Her curiosity towards me was quite profound.

She's looking at me.

Maybe this isn't the right way to say it, but it almost felt like an invitation.

No one had interacted with a white shark in that way prior to that day.

This was that anti-Jaws moment.

And gave it to GoPro

and they released it as a conservation thing.

That's when everything changed.

-Ocean Ramsey. -Ocean Ramsey.

-Ocean Ramsey. -Ocean Ramsey.

-Her name's Ocean? -Her name is Ocean.

A fearless daredevil who swims with great whites.

This woman is actually swimming with a great white shark.

No! That's a giant shark.

I'm not sure how much the shark liked that.

Great white sharks are simply misunderstood.

So, like any rational person, she swims with them.

If we were playing To Tell the Truth right now,

I could put any two people next to you and no one would ever pick

you're the one that went swimming with a great white shark.

The community began to grow.

Also, there were some business opportunities

to passively raise awareness,

which was really good for the sharks.

There's now more and more people

who want to explore and learn more about shark behavior.

And we're there to introduce people to sharks.

You guys can come in. Just stay super close to the boat.

And helping to keep people safe.

There's nothing like empowering someone with personal, first-hand perspective.

For them to be able to say,

"I was in the water with a shark and it was a beautiful experience."

And to appreciate what a shark truly is,

and that will be inspiring to them to help protect them.

I mean, the tricky part is the balance of this whole thing, right?

Is like, we need to protect these animals.

But I saw what that animal can do to a human being.

This morning, people on high alert

at a popular surf spot in O'ahu.

This time, a 25-year-old surfer's in critical condition

after he was attacked by a shark.

Colin Cook was surfing off O'ahu's North Shore

when the shark suddenly appeared.

It was, like, a beautiful day.

And the water looked clear and really inviting.

I had been out there, you know, for a couple hours.

And I remember, at that point, thinking I probably should get a wave in.

And out of nowhere, I remember being slammed by something

and getting pulled under.

I kind of opened my eyes underwater

and realized that there was, like, a large shark attached to my leg.

And I was able to break free and swim to the surface.

This finger… tip of the finger was missing,

and these three fingers were hanging over the side.

I thought, "Oh, that was it. I'm okay."

And then I looked back at my leg, and it was completely gone.

And I realized at that point, like, I'm done, I'm dead.

I just felt a sense that I was supposed to be there.

Whoa. I don't know how much we can get into this, guys,

but, like the shark bit his leg here.

And the leash was on the ankle.

Because of the placement of the bite,

since Colin climbed back on his board,

the shark was ripping him around by the leash, like, when I got to him.

At that point, I looked over and heard, "Hold on, buddy, I'm coming for you."

Keoni happened to be paddling by me on a stand-up paddle board.

Ocean and Juan had told me, like,

"Listen, tiger shark's gonna have a ton of power moving forward."

"But if you can make it miss,

then you've got like ten, 12 seconds for it to turn around."

And I hit it as hard as I could.

I tried to push it down in the water column.

I remember as soon as I hit her down and I knew that her mouth was passing us,

I threw the paddle and I put him on my back,

and we started paddling in.

I had, like, virtually no life left in me.

It was kind of hard to breathe. And…

I remember I was kind of telling Keoni my last wishes.

He said, "Hey, man, just tell my mom I love her."

We've been close ever since this happened.

It's kind of a unique bond that we have.

You know, he's almost like this hero to me.

Cook made it to shore with the help of a friend.

His left leg had to be amputated and he lost parts of two of his fingers,

but he's still here.

Keoni Bowthorpe was awarded the Carnegie Medal.

It's given to those who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree

to save someone else.

It's such a wonderful hero story

that my heart just… it just feels crushed.

It's… it's just a tragedy.

And the only thing that I can do is look for the positive in any situation.

And that's the fact that it's so rare.

All day, every day, sharks are swimming past surfers, swimmers and divers.

And if they looked at us as a natural prey item…

These kinds of incidents would be happening all the time.

And yet it's so rare.

I feel like my job is not just to protect humans from sharks…

It's also to protect sharks from humans.

I sometimes go through these periods of time

where you've gotten to know these individuals,

and then you don't see them for a couple of years.

You're like, "Did they get hooked"

"and get their jaw broken open or wrapped up in a net?"

"Are they caught in a fishing line?"

"Did they die?"

We hadn't seen Roxy in a long time.

She had a rope going down into her stomach with a hook.

I couldn't cut that

because if we put tension on it, you could just see the pain in her.

God, that broke my heart to see that.

You could tell that she was just super weak.

In my head, I was just like, "Okay, she's probably not gonna make it."

I got to say goodbye at least, you know?

I was most afraid for the sharks

at the point where I had really fallen in love with them as individuals.

So let's do something to actually help save them.

So we tried to get a law passed

to make policy change,

to get them to be fully protected from wasteful killing in Hawaii.

Next bill is HB1734.

Relating to marine life protection.

It's a long one.

Can you speak into the microphone?

Sorry. Can you guys hear me okay?

It was dropping everything that was going on in our life.

The social media strategy, we'll just keep going on that one.

I don't need to sleep. Let's get this done

and try and get as much media out there as possible.

Aloha, I'm Ocean Ramsey. I'm a shark and marine conservationist and scientist.

Sharks are crucial for the health and balance of marine ecosystems

and need and deserve to be protected.

I think she thinks like a shark. And that I mean as a compliment.

Take a stand against shark fishing and elect local leaders

that will establish laws to help protect sharks.

Hi, you guys.

Rallying in the community to try and get people to bombard the politicians.

The sad reality is

it's over 100 million sharks are killed every year.

Why protect them? Why do we actually need sharks?

If we remove them from our ocean, everything falls apart.

70% of the air that you breathe comes from the oceans,

and sharks are a vital component to that healthy marine ecosystem.

In order to make a change

in the time that we need,

I think that we really must work together.

We must work as a team.

In my district in South Maui, there's been a spate of shark attacks.

The fact that a couple instances are happening are likely due

to the increase in the number of people that are spending time in the water.

My name is Juan Oliphant, shark conservationist.

It wasn't just Juan and I going.

It was a whole bunch of people in the community.

Hawaii State Capitol Building. Room 312. Hope you can make it.

Shark species will go extinct without our protection.

We've had incidents of sharks being caught and strung up on street signs,

like hung from the neck.

Submitting testimony online.

From all the different organizations that we work with.

She's so driven on so many different platforms.

It's hard to keep up with her.

Not everyone's gonna agree with you.

There's a huge competition between sharks and fishermen.

Some fishermen kept opposing it.

I don't believe that catching and killing sharks is a major problem in Hawaii.

That's not true.

It causes a lot of chaos.

There have been malicious killings, very intentional killings.

-Is that or is that not self-defense? -That's debatable.

No, no, no. We're gonna learn from nature.

What academic publications have you published?

When I look at your website, it's very commercial in nature.

They underestimate Ocean about the toughness

that she is and she has.

We're in opposition of this bill.

I'm in full support.

I'm testifying in opposition to this bill.

So I'm here to give the manō the full protection.

We put in so much effort.

But it failed.

Year after year after year.

That's when I definitely would see her in her most dark phases.

And she's a different person.

It's just… Her mindset definitely changes to being, like, a lot more negative.

She just doesn't know how to stop.

I know.

She's just gonna work herself to death.

I just know that she's battling something tough.

She doesn't really open up to me even about it because, um…

I don't know why.

I definitely felt, like, major depression, which I...

It's funny, I actually feel bad about feeling depressed

because you have so many opportunities, so many things that are going on for you.

And, you know, it's like everybody goes through struggles.

I wanted to feel like I'm there in those moments with her.

I couldn't do this without him.

He's the only person, I think, that understands me.

Everything that we've been through together has only made us stronger.

By 2019, we've been working for four years

trying to, like, get that law passed.

The next deadline for the bill to be reintroduced

was coming up at the end of the week.

And we knew we were coming up short again on support from the politicians.

And then it happens.

We heard about a whale that was coming onto the reef in Waikiki.

It was a dead whale.

I'm instantly like, "Ooh,"

because a dead whale carcass is gonna attract sharks.

So we were in the water.

There were tiger sharks and we were observing them.

And at one point, the tiger sharks disappeared.

And then everything was quiet.

But I'm hearing little dolphin noises.

And I'm seeing some flashes down in the deep.

And then up from the depths…

Comes this massive great white shark.

Oh my God!

She's so huge, 20-plus foot.

Juan was able to actually get in really close.

And you could see her trying to just take down more of this whale meat.

And all the bits of whale flesh

are sort of coming out the side of her gills.

It just seems so surreal.

There's no word to describe what that experience was like.

And she goes right to the boat.

And it sounds like metal on metal.

And you just realize, like, how thick their skin is.

It just seems so much more beautiful than I could have imagined.

With her, it's a different feeling.

I don't feel, like, the need to breathe.

The emotions and the connection that I feel,

it's overwhelming.

This is what I'm supposed to do.

This is what I'm alive for.

This isn't a movie. This is real.

This is a 20-foot great white.

The largest great white shark on record anywhere in the world.

And the oldest too, 50 years old.

The shark made a surprise appearance

off the coast of O'ahu this week.

Diver Ocean Ramsey swam alongside her.

Ramsey has traveled the globe studying sharks…

The attention that came on Hawaii for having great white sharks

was huge.

She is doing this to kind of show

that not all sharks can prove deadly to humans.

And it's raising the need to protect these animals versus vilify them.

-Do you think she has a point there? -No.

There was controversy around it, saying, "Oh, you shouldn't touch a shark."

You absolutely don't need to harass wild animals

to show they're not dangerous.

Look, but don't touch.

The controversy was actually good because it kept it in the news longer.

And it kept a shark in the news in a good way.

Because it was people saying, "Oh, you shouldn't touch them."

Like, people care.

On the inside, I was like, "Oh my gosh, people actually care about a shark."

There's a lot of controversy about how close you should get to a white shark.

In general, I don't think the sharks give a darn.

Um, I don't think that it's harassment.

I don't agree with it,

but the level of good that they could potentially be doing

for the overall population of shark conservation…

There can be a lot of good done as well.

People kill 70 to 100 million sharks every year.

Her numbers are startling,

that they're killing that many of those beautiful creatures.

-Yeah. -That's alarming.

The timing of the shark's visit comes as Ramsey pushes

for stronger legislation to protect the mammoth creatures of the sea.

Right then, that week,

was where we needed to schedule this bill to protect sharks.

And I'm like, "Okay, I'm on the level." I'm like, "Bring it, let's go."

This is Roxy.

Right now, she's currently swimming around with a wire leader in her throat.

Many people have come out to meet her and see her and fall in love with her

and ask me all the time on social media, "Is she alive?"

And honestly, I can't say.

These animals are going to be banished from the planet,

and there's no way back.

It's on the line right now.

We have the best chance we will ever have right now.

Just stop killing sharks to begin to heal the ocean.

Thanks, everybody, for coming out.

As you can see, very little opposition, so…

That wasn't by accident. That was because you folks have been organizing

and pushing this issue for quite some time now, so…

If we can be open enough to see things from multiple perspectives,

we have a greater chance of finding that balance

and connection with our fellow creatures of this world.

Man has always eliminated things when they're afraid of things.

You're going into their environment, you know.

It's our environment too,

but how do we coexist? You know, that's the real lesson.

Good news!

House Bill 553,

a bill for an act relating to the protection of sharks.

This establishes the offense of intentionally and knowingly

capturing, entangling, or killing a shark

in state marine waters.

And House Bill 553 is now law in Hawaii as Act 51.

It's now illegal to kill sharks in Hawaii.

But the bigger thing is that this law is now already in use,

and it can be given to other states.

It just takes a few people to speak up, and things can change.

Ooh!

That is Roxy.

Oh God, yeah!

When she came back,

levels of excitement and happiness, you're just like,

"She's alive. She's here. She's kicking it."

Unbelievable. Yeah, baby, what's up?

Ah, love this shark.

Oh, Roxy.

We were thrilled to see her, like, just looking so healthy.

Something happened. Someone helped her out,

and she was, yeah, on fire. She was amazing.

Getting to see her just thriving, that was a relief.

And knowing that Roxy and Nikki and Kalihi

and all these sharks that we grew up with that are like family to us

are now officially protected,

it makes me super happy.

My mom, she helped me get into conservation as well.

What was her thing?

You're only a limited amount of time on the planet.

Let's just try and make it better than when you found it.

That was always her thing. It always stuck with me.

So I was like, "Oh, yeah, so I got to find what's my thing that I can do

to make it a little bit better than where I found it."

And I feel like that's with the ocean and with the sharks for me,

for sure, 100%. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. That one got me a little teary-eyed.

Jeez, I'm all emotional today.

It's the hot... You guys got it so hot in here.

♪ There is a swelling storm ♪

♪ And I'm caught up In the middle of it all ♪

♪ There is a light… ♪

I think it'd be hard to overstate the significance of what they're doing.

You could do far worse

in heroes for your kids.

♪ It comes and goes in waves ♪

♪ It always does ♪

♪ It always does… ♪

I think people just want my signature sometimes

'cause they think that I'm going to die and then the book will be worth more.

♪ …flood ♪

♪ Into the flood ♪

♪ And the freedom of falling ♪

♪ The feeling I thought was set in stone ♪

♪ It slips through my fingers… ♪

Everything that I've accomplished, no one would know about it

without his incredible talent and skills and eye.

♪ It comes and goes in waves ♪

♪ And carries us away ♪

♪ I've watched my wild youth ♪

♪ Disappear… ♪

Colin Cook survived a shark attack.

It's a big weekend for Cook because he was back in the water.

It's a great day to be down here. It's inspiring to see everybody.

♪ …back again? ♪

♪ Is it ever coming back again? ♪

♪ Take me back to the feeling when… ♪

I wanna meet more sharks and explore this beautiful planet.

While I'd like to be able to continue that,

you know, you never know when you're gonna go.

But if it happens from a shark, I'm always big on going on the record of,

you know, I'm putting myself in these more extreme situations.

So definitely don't blame the shark.

♪ And the freedom of falling ♪

♪ The feeling I thought was set in stone ♪

♪ It slips through my fingers ♪

♪ I'm trying hard to let go ♪

♪ It comes and goes in waves ♪

♪ It carries us away ♪